BIG successes of Lisp

[prunesquallor at comcast.net]

mike420 at ziplip.com writes:

> In the context of LATEX, some Pythonista asked what the big 
> successes of Lisp were. I think there were at least three *big* 
> successes.
>
>    a. orbitz.com web site uses Lisp for algorithms, etc.
>    b. Yahoo store was originally written in Lisp.
>    c. Emacs
>
> The issues with these will probably come up, so I might as well
> mention them myself (which will also make this a more balanced
> post)
>
> a. AFAIK Orbitz frequently has to be shut down for maintenance
> (read "full garbage collection" - I'm just guessing: with
> generational garbage collection, you still have to do full
> garbage collection once in a while, and on a system like that
> it can take a while)

You are misinformed.  Orbitz runs a `server farm' of hundreds of
computers each running the ITA faring engine.  Should any of these
machines need to GC, there are hundreds of others waiting to service
users.