Re:Why Lisp Did Not and Never Will Gain Enough Traction
by KirinDave on Wednesday August 15, 2012 @12:28AM
(#4384591)
I grant it may not be quite as important in the industry, but got a lot of popularity in Academia, and some very modest inroads in the industry.
But you're right, it never had the singular popularity that Javascript, Java, or Python now enjoy. Sorry if in my haste I gave a false impression. Not what I meant to imply.
I'm afraid I have to dispute this. I'm about as dedicated a Lisper as you'll find -- learned it at the feet of Bernie Greenberg, Gerry Sussman, and David Moon in the late 1970s, and still use it when I get the chance. (Oh and I think my Symbolics machine still works, though I haven't fired it up in several years.) I was around during the time you're probably thinking of -- the AI bubble of the mid-1980s -- and even then, Lisp was the language a lot of people loved to hate, if they knew anything about it at all.
There was some interest in Lisp, to be sure, but I think "fairly popular" is putting it too strongly. It has always been a fringe language.
On another note -- it struck me the other day that if history had gone a little differently, we might be using Dylan instead of JavaScript. Oh well...