Why don't people like lisp?

[Kenny Tilton]

Joe Marshall wrote:

> ... The Lisp machine customers were typically
> large, wealthy companies with a significant investment in research
> like petrochemical companies and defense contractors.  The Lisp
> machine was originally developed as an alternative to the `heavy
> metal' of a mainframe, and thus was quite attractive to these
> companies.  They were quite convinced of the value.  The problem was
> that they didn't *stay* convinced.
> 
> > How many people, Lispers included, are going to buy, for instance,
> > an advanced, technically excellent, hydrogen fuel cell car, complete
> > with in-garage hydrogen generator unit, for, say $200,000.

Maybe that was part of the problem: all of the Lisp installed base lived
on an expensive platform (unless compared with big iron). When the AI
projects did not deliver, there waa no grass roots safety net to fall
back on and Lisp disappeared from radar in a wink.

This time Lisp is growing slowly, with an early adopter here and an
early adopter there. And this time Lisp requires /no/ special hardware.
And there is a standard so there is no fragmentation. Except of course
that the first thing anyone does after learning Lisp is start a project
to create a new version of Lisp. :)

-- 

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