Why don't people like lisp?

[prunesquallor at comcast.net]

Ville Vainio <ville.spammehardvainio at spamtut.fi> writes:

> "Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> writes:
>
>> It's not particularly clever; there's no real need for that.  In
>> general, the preference is to be clear and understandable over
>> being clever.  (The New Jersey approach, perhaps?)
>
> Some people (academics) are paid for being clever.  Others
> (engineers) are paid for creating systems that work (in the wide
> meaning of the word), in a timeframe that the company/client can
> afford.

And we all know that nothing made by academics actually works.
Conversely there is no need to be clever if you are an engineer.

> Macros provide billions of different ways to be "clever", so obviously
> Lisp gives greater opportunity of billable hours for people who can
> bill for clever stuff. I'm studying Grahams "On Lisp" as bad-time
> reading ATM, and can also sympathize w/ people who use Lisp just for
> the kicks.

Shhh!  Don't alert the PHB's to how we pad our hours!

> Lisp might have a good future ahead of it if it was only competing
> againt C++, Java and others.  Unfortunately for Lisp, other dynamic
> languages exist at the moment, and they yield greater productivity.

For instance, a productivity study done by Erann Gat showed ...  no
wait.  Where was that productivity study that showed how far behind
Lisp was?

> Most bosses are more impressed with getting stuff done fast than
> getting it done slowly, using gimmicks that would have given you an
> A+ if it was a CS research project.

Which is *precisely* the reason that bosses have adopted C++ over C.