>Why is it that you are more likely to see a nodejs app or a java app, if you randomly sampled any software project?
It comes from History. Lisp was way more powerful than anything else but it was ultra expensive as it required special hardware that "hardware accelerated" the Lisp code. The basic Lisp instructions were opcodes.
We are talking about USD 100K-200K of the time for a single machine. Big multinationals discovering oil in Saudi Arabia could pay that(and paid that for 3d visualizations of the terrain explosions tests),big TV networks,multinationals, but it was out of reach for mere mortals.
In normal machines, Lisp was extremely slow as it was interpreted without native opcodes.
The first languages in microcomputers were basically Basic. Microcomputers were toys compared with any serious machines but normal people could buy that.
So programmers started using assembly to bridge the gap between underpowered micro-computers and the serious machines they have seen on their work of had heard about.
Using lots of efficiency tricks they managed to extract more and more power from those machines. More people bought microcomputers, prices went down, machines got more powerful.
Over time efficiency was not as necessary and companies started using C, that evolved into Obj C, and C++, java, python and the languages that we have today like javascript(developed with C tools).
There were billions invested in making that change possible. Billions that Lisp did not get.
It comes from History. Lisp was way more powerful than anything else but it was ultra expensive as it required special hardware that "hardware accelerated" the Lisp code. The basic Lisp instructions were opcodes.
We are talking about USD 100K-200K of the time for a single machine. Big multinationals discovering oil in Saudi Arabia could pay that(and paid that for 3d visualizations of the terrain explosions tests),big TV networks,multinationals, but it was out of reach for mere mortals.
In normal machines, Lisp was extremely slow as it was interpreted without native opcodes.
The first languages in microcomputers were basically Basic. Microcomputers were toys compared with any serious machines but normal people could buy that.
So programmers started using assembly to bridge the gap between underpowered micro-computers and the serious machines they have seen on their work of had heard about.
Using lots of efficiency tricks they managed to extract more and more power from those machines. More people bought microcomputers, prices went down, machines got more powerful.
Over time efficiency was not as necessary and companies started using C, that evolved into Obj C, and C++, java, python and the languages that we have today like javascript(developed with C tools).
There were billions invested in making that change possible. Billions that Lisp did not get.