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by danem 2539 days ago
Ok... so why wasn't Lisp chosen over Javascript for the web, why wasn't Lisp chosen as the language for Android, iOS, or Windows?
1 comments

Well, .NET GC was originally implemented in Lisp.

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/401

And NeXTSTEP Interface Builder prototype was done in Common Lisp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder

https://vimeo.com/62618532

So it definitly had an influence on iOS and Windows.

Regarding Android, as Guy Steele puts it on his ClojureTV talk about 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."

Finally, regarding the Web

https://thenewstack.io/brendan-eich-on-creating-javascript-i...

"He later calls Scheme “that beautiful research language I was tempted with.” But by the time he’d joined Netscape, they had a deal with Sun Microsystems, which was now pushing their newly-minted language Java. “And suddenly the story was, ‘Well, we don’t know if we want Scheme. We don’t know if we even need a little language like we wanted you to do. Maybe Java’s enough.'”"

> Interface Builder prototype was done in Common Lisp

It was actually a Lisp product by a company, which was shown to Steve Jobs.

Thanks for the correction.