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From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker)
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
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In article <jbs-1302971006290001@dial-sf1-5.iway.aimnet.com>,
jbs@quiotix.com (Jeffrey B. Siegal) wrote:

> Perhaps many of you "old timers" were too close to the forest/trees at the
> time, or maybe you just had a different opinion at the time (and some even
> now).

If I'm an 'old timer' now, I'd hate to think what I'll be called in another
10 years!

I like to think I can still see 'trees' where most others can only see
'vectors' and 'arrays'.  (e.g., objects v. 'bitmaps')  ;-) ;-) ;-)

> However, in 1986, I took a Computer Systems Architecture course (don't
> recall the number) as an undergraduate at MIT , and one of the case
> studies was basically why Lisp machines were a "Non Winning" solution.  In
> hindsight, the purpose of these case studies was to give the students
> (future engineers) the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made in the
> past and avoid repeating them in the future (and, occasionally, learn from
> correct decisions).  In 1986, the mistake made by the Lisp industry in
> stubbornly sticking to proprietary architectures was readily apparent.

Depends upon what you mean by 'proprietary'.  If 'proprietary' = 'low volume',
I'll agree with you, but if 'proprietary' means 'optimized for C', I'll pass.
There was one point where Steve Jobs would have considered putting a Lisp
chip into every single Macintosh, but Symbolics was several years too
late for that.  If Symbolics had been ready at the appropriate time, its
'proprietary' chip would have had high volume, which might have changed
the course of computing.  If you want to know why Symbolics was late with
their chip, you might ask its board members why they didn't invest in it...
