I've never learned Lisp, but my motivation for learning Haskell (after briefly toying around with it) was to create a DSL. Specifically, I was designing a DSL with the intention of implementing it in python, when I realized that my DSL seemed a lot like a monad in do notation. Implementing it didn't fail to dissapoint in just how easy it was. Having said that, a DSL implemented as a monad does not behave like any other haskell code, in that it is a monad, and only looks like a DSL when used in do notation.