Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: <bhunter@cat.bbsr.edu> (Bill Hunter)
Subject: Why is Lisp inactive compared to Perl et al?
Message-ID: <517cb$d2920.d3@cat.bbsr.edu>
Date: Mon, 01 May 1995 16:52:04 GMT
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(Open invitation to be flamed, but it's an honest question ...)

If you keep an eye on the comp.lang groups, you'll find many articles
on Perl and TCL, for example, and next to none on Lisp.  For example,
I haven't kept up with News for the last few days, but my
comp.lang.perl has 338 unread entries, comp.lang.tcl has 171, and
comp.lang.lisp has 15.  Why is this?  Is is that these newer languages
have more problems to solve and require more discussion, or is that
Lisp, for whatever reasons, is not being used very much.

Regrettably, I suspect the latter and wonder what can be done to renew
interest in Lisp.  It seems like Lisp had a shot at widespread use in
the late 80's during the initial commercialization of expert systems,
and fell into disrepute because it didn't fit well on the hardware of
that era.  For example, Gold Hill Common Lisp was probably the best
publicized, best capitalized attempt to take Lisp mainstream, and,
speaking purely as a customer rather than a developer, it sure looked
like they had to struggle with the limitations of fitting it all onto
an Intel 286.  Meanwhile, some of the best minds of the era took a run
at doing it right with hardware, and we all know how LMI and Symbolics
turned out!

Whatever the reasons, a language that embeds four decades worth of
solutions to problems is languishing while people jump aboard new
languages only to gradually rediscover the problems.  So I'll ask it
again:  what would it take to make Lisp into a contender?  Maybe we
can do something about it given that corporate America is finally
waking up to the fact that the COBOL era has ended and the successor
language is not yet identified.



