Are you kidding me? Are you really *(*$@#ing, Grade A kidding me?

Python/Perl/Ruby require interpreters. Scheme and Lisp are frequently run within interpreters. "stand-alone executable" require HARDWARE. Any programming system requires *something* underneath it unless you are programming in a purely physical system like an automated abacus with mechanical gears that buzz and whirr.

Programming languages are defined by their Turing completeness: can they do things repeatedly, can they assign values to memory locations and perform some basic set of operations (nand works nicely), can they make decisions. Everything else is fluff.

Perl has "fluff" that handles regular expressions very well.

Python (and others) have "fluff" that make networking and database ops easy.

R has "fluff" that makes it terribly convenient to work with data.

Matlab has "fluff" that makes it very easy to do numerical methods programming.

Mathematica has "fluff" that makes it very easy to do symbolic computation.

Each and every one of these, and most well-known languages, with all their warts and beauty marks are Turing complete and are deserving of the term "programming language".

Regards,
Mark

(1) Lisp can be used in a functional fashion, but it is not a "pure" functional language.

(2) Lisp can be optimized to machine detail, just as C is (up to the capabilities of the compilers -- which for most purposes is sufficiently well-done by Lisp compilers). (See the back of Practical Common Lisp by Peter Siebel, I think it is available online).

(3) Some would argue that writing a program in C is the same sort of pre-mature optimization you refer to. Harken back to the idea of C as glorified assembly code. Solve the same program in Lisp (or another "very" high level language). Profile. Optimize the critical sections (algorithm first, then machine specifics -- which, as I mention in point (1) can be done in Lisp). Voila.

Of course, many "very" high level languages allow interfacing to C for speed critical sections. So, you could apply the same process from (3) with Perl, Python, etc.

A better criticism of Lisp is getting your hands on convenient libraries for some common tasks. However, there are good libraries out there.

For the record, I'm a much better, much more experienced C programmer than I am a Lisp coder.

MapReduce?

Granted, I'm answering a slightly different question: where has FP proved to be a very useful paradigm for solving an important problem. I won't make any claims about optimality.