Why don't people like lisp?

[David Steuber]

Pascal Costanza <costanza at web.de> writes:

> All in all, these things are hard to measure. I have first learned
> about Lisp about 10-15 years ago, and then completely forgot about
> it. It was only about one and a half years ago that I have
> rediscovered it. In the meantime, I have learned a lot about
> restrictions that most languages impose on me as a programmer. Now I
> can really appreciate the expressive power of Lisp and the degree to
> which unnecessary restrictions don't bother me anymore in Lisp. This
> wouldn't have been possible 15 years ago. Now do you really think the
> fact that I have "dissed" Lisp at first tells us something really
> important about the language other than that I was just too
> inexperienced to be able to appreciate it?

I still need to drag myself over the learning curve.  I am forever
being distracted by other things and not devoting time to Lisp or any
other programming right now.

However.

My personal desire is to use Lisp as a competitive advantage for my
own software development.  Self employment with a livable income is
what I want and I think that Lisp can get me there.

I have no beef with Python.  I don't like the use of white space to
define block structures, but that is just my hangup.  I think it is a
Good Thing that Perl has something to compete against.  There is also
Ruby of course.  Heck, it's not hard to point out all the different
scripting languages out there.  I think scripting languages will rule
in the web based application world, Java notwithstanding.

I've served time doing web based applications.  They have their
place, but they are not something I find very interesting.  I prefer
the old school application that each computer has a copy of to run.

Compiled languages server better for that purpose I think.  Sure,
embedding a scripting language like Python in a traditional
application will make it tons better (unless the application is a
Dali Clock).  However, the base language is rather irrelevant in that
case.  At least it is to the user.

On an unrelated note, I'm not entirely comfortable with all this
cross posting.  It generates the sort of debate you see in the
*.advocacy groups.  I'm not saying the debate is a bad thing.  It
just clutters up the news groups that are intended to provide support
for their respective languages.  If the group doesn't already exist,
perhaps a formal proposal for comp.lang.advocacy is in order.  I know
some languages have specific advocacy groups already.
comp.lang.java.advocacy could be moved to comp.lang.advocacy.java to
go with the new group as well as the others that are out there so
that everything is in one pile.

-- 
   One Emacs to rule them all.  One Emacs to find them,
   One Emacs to take commands and to the keystrokes bind them,

All other programming languages wish they were Lisp.