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This is certainly relevant for Lisp programmers: "Contrarily, major schisms or breakdowns in the relationships and development of a language and its community

This is certainly relevant for Lisp programmers: "Contrarily, major schisms or breakdowns in the relationships and development of a language and its community are big warning signs that should make you think twice about the future of a language." Related reading includes "The Lisp Curse": http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html And note that "Why Lisp Did Not and Never Will Gain Enough Traction" offers this alternative explanation: "Since there is so little pre choice, the glue that is supposed to hold a community together is too weak to draw enough people that would build up a momentum." http://kresimirbojcic.com/2012/08/14/why-lisp-did-not-and-never-will-gain-enough-traction.html http://kresimirbojcic.com/2012/08/14/why-lisp-did-not-and-ne...

wtbob 10y ago
Those are definitely some interesting ideas, but I'm uncertain to what extent they're actually true. I think that Common Lisp really does make choices for its programmers, and asks that they develop in a fashion such that their code can easily live with others (notably, the places where it doesn't — e.g. the common readtable — are nowadays regarded as mistakes). One of my several issues with Scheme is that historically it has made so few choices ('you have lists — develop whatever data structures you need!' & 'you have call/cc — develop whatever control structures you need!'). But that's a problem of Scheme (less so, in recent years), not of Lisp or the closely-related (to Scheme) Racket. There is definitely something to be said about how easy it is to get things done in Lisp: 'Making Scheme object-oriented is a sophomore homework assignment. On the other hand, adding object orientation to C requires the programming chops of Bjarne Stroustrup' (from The Lisp Curse).

wtbob 10y ago

Those are definitely some interesting ideas, but I'm uncertain to what extent they're actually true. I think that Common Lisp really does make choices for its programmers, and asks that they develop in a fashion such that their code can easily live with others (notably, the places where it doesn't — e.g. the common readtable — are nowadays regarded as mistakes). One of my several issues with Scheme is that historically it has made so few choices ('you have lists — develop whatever data structures you need!' & 'you have call/cc — develop whatever control structures you need!'). But that's a problem of Scheme (less so, in recent years), not of Lisp or the closely-related (to Scheme) Racket. There is definitely something to be said about how easy it is to get things done in Lisp: 'Making Scheme object-oriented is a sophomore homework assignment. On the other hand, adding object orientation to C requires the programming chops of Bjarne Stroustrup' (from The Lisp Curse).