| No, the better way to rebut this claim of ineffectiveness in the market would have been to say "which Lisp?" The fact is that Lisp has spawned a great number of descendants. So to compare modern Java to some ancient version of Lisp from the 70s would be no more relevant than comparing modern Java to C++98. But even that has it's problems for the Lisp fans, because if you aggregate all the work being done in various dialects of Lisp, it is still no more than a pimple on the ass of the donkey that is Java. ---- Your rebuttal fails specifically because the claim is not that work cannot be done in Lisp, but rather that for various reasons hardly any work is actually being done in Lisp. You're trying to disprove the strawman that no work is being in Lisp, congratulations your tilting at windmills was successful, but that was not the claim that was being made. ---- The question of why Lisp is not more popular is actually really interesting. Let me advance one theory - that Lisp programs devolve too easily into domain specific languages, and that impedes the transmission of ideas to other programmers. E.g. if I write some awesome Lisp code to solve problem X, it is hard for you to figure out what is going on until you understand what is going on - a chicken and egg type problem. Whereas languages which remain mired in the foul stench of their own syntax and keywords are easier to understand because if I know the language (Java or COBOL or VB or C++ or whatever) then I am already halfway towards understanding the solution because the language it is expressed in is relatively static. E.g. worse is better |