

Using Lisp at Paragent - projectileboy
http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/10/lisp-for-agile-teams

======
brlewis
"Whether or not Lisp becomes more popular with a new generation of developers
remains to be seen."

My bet is it won't. Lisp success stories have been around for ages. PG has
articulated its advantages well, as have others. There's some psychological
reason why it has never achieved massive popularity. If it ever becomes
massively popular, it will be in a generation that is somehow psychologically
different.

~~~
abstractbill
The hot languages in the circles I move in (Python and Ruby) are, from my
point of view, poor-man's Lisps.

Quoting Guy Steele, on Java, "we were not out to win over the Lisp
programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of
them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy?"

I believe languages (both hot and widely used) will continue to move in the
general direction of Lisp. As for why more people don't just leapfrog that
process, I think the best answer is in Worse-Is-Better
(<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>).

~~~
brlewis
I don't think Richard Gabriel nailed the genesis of worse-is-better
popularity. If valuing implementation simplicity above all else were it, then
Scheme would be very popular. Unix and C became more popular than Lisp by
running fast on cheaper hardware. For a long time Lisp has run fast on cheap
hardware, but it's still not popular.

But if either simplicity of implementation or speed were necessary
preconditions of popularity, how would Java have become so popular? Marketing?
If marketing is what matters, how did Java (in its C# incarnation) displace
Visual Basic?

Any time I hear someone say "Lisp would be popular except for problem X" I
think of some other computer language that became popular despite problem X.
Even its supposedly problematic syntax. Look at XML; it's popular, and has a
syntax pretty much like s-expressions only worse.

Complexity of implementation? Slowness? Lack of marketing? Unfamiliar syntax?
No, none of these explain the lack of popularity. Someday somebody will hit on
what the real roadblock is and remove it, probably by accident.

~~~
cstejerean
Languages become popular when they gain a critical mass of developers. They
can get this critical mass of developers for more than one reason. Marketing,
running fast on cheap hardware, etc. can all be things that can single
handedly make a language popular.

A lot of languages however have become popular due to large PR budgets (Java
and the .NET family).

XML became popular because it addressed the need to have a self-documenting
data inter-change format so that governments and companies can be reassured
that even if a vendor goes out of business they can reuse the data (similar
reasons for the push behind ODF).

Lisp hasn't yet addressed the needs of the masses (develop X blog in 15
minutes with a human readable syntax), or be pushed into the enterprise by
large companies, or have a large pool of qualified developers, so it hasn't
become popular.

Personally I don't think it ever will become a mainstream language. It
requires a different way of thinking that I'm not sure a lot of folks can
grasp. Ruby might be as close to Lisp as a lot of folks are willing to get.

~~~
icey
Do you think it may be similar to the political phenomenon of not voting for /
supporting a candidate because of his/her lack of perceived ability to win?

------
MuddyMo
In light of this story, perhaps I should amend my quote:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72655>

