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by madiathomas 2499 days ago
I understand the PG part but I don't agree with the experienced Programmers part. I know hundreds of experienced Programmers and zero of them are using LISP. I am one of them. They are using C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, Python etc. Anything but LISP.

I won't even be surprised if LISP has a market share of less than 0.01%. Even in the US. Do you have examples of popular system built using LISP?
1 comments
reikonomusha 2499 days ago
Rigetti is a company that builds quantum computers and uses Lisp.

* https://github.com/rigetti

Google Flights is built on Lisp as well.

* https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/87540/google-flig...

I don’t think the parent meant that experienced programmers are heavy users of Lisp, or that they use it as their main language, but rather they often know it and have an interest in it, even if it’s not paying their bills.

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madiathomas 2499 days ago
Out of those 100s of Developers that I know, none is interested in learning LISP. Not even as a hobby. Experienced Developers have already chosen their tools and they focus on improving on those skills.
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reikonomusha 2499 days ago
I’m interested in why you asked 100s of developers if they’re interested in Lisp.

In my experience, which is evidently quite different to yours, excellent developers also want to increase their breadth, understand which tools are good for which jobs, and generally increase their knowledge about programming and software engineering. It’s usually the poorer engineers, experienced or not, that stick to just a few tools with no knowledge of others.

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madiathomas 2498 days ago
They talk about what they are interested in on a daily basis. You don't even need to ask them. They will tell you.

There are millions of development tools in this world. No-one has time to learn all the tools. Even if they want to. I don't understand why LISP have to be the only exception when coming to tools a Developer can ignore. I doubt Linus Torvalds has time to learn every obscure technology out there. He focuses on delivering kick-ass solutions using C. Same as other great Programmers. It is the book writers and consultants who are busy learning each and every tool.

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lispm 2498 days ago
A bunch of programming language developers learned Lisp and were influenced by it: James Gosling (Java), Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby), Brendan Eich (JavaScript), Alan Kay (Smalltalk), Robin Milner (ML), ...

Hardly 'book writers and consultants'. These are among the most influential people for programmers... if you had learned Lisp decades ago, you would have learned much of the basics for those newer languages: managed runtimes, evaluation, automatic memory management, programming with first class functions, virtual byte code machines, etc etc...

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madiathomas 2498 days ago
Then we should relegate LISP to an academic programming language and stop pretending that it is a major player when all the data proves the contrary. LISP failed for half a century because it isn't the best tool for the job, not because we are just stupid and only the select few have the brains for it. It is not the case. It is just not good for the job at hand -> delivering solutions.

I have used 80% of those programming languages you listed in a professional environment and I didn't require to learn LISP. I didn't see any resemblence of LISP on any of them. To correct you, Java was heavily influenced by C/C++, not LISP. In such a way that my transition fron C++ to Java only took me few hours.

"Lisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material." - Alan Kay

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