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> I sometimes wonder why Lisp has not been more popular in the technology industry. I think one of the problems is one of marketing. The hackers of the 60s wo
by chimprich 8y ago
> I sometimes wonder why Lisp has not been more popular in the technology industry.
I think one of the problems is one of marketing.
The hackers of the 60s wouldn't have cared but there must be a number of people and businesses since who have been put off, consciously or unconsciously, by the language having the same name as a speech impediment.
I'm being entirely serious; I think the language would have been more popular with a cooler name.
Another problem is a perception of Lisp as being an old language. When I tell work colleagues about how great Lisp is, they're put off by it having been around a long time. I tell them that's ridiculous, the /computer/ has been around a long time, should we abandon that? But it is an uphill struggle.
- xyrouter 8y ago> I'm being entirely serious; I think the language would have been more popular with a cooler name. How do you explain the lack of popularity of Lisp dialects that do not use "Lisp" in their name, for example, Arc, Racket and Clojure. I know that HN was written in Arc, Arc was written in Racket and Clojure is used in a handful of companies but a far greater number of companies and projects use Python.
- FractalLP 8y agoProbably because Arc is an incomplete hobby project of Paul Graham that will never be finished now and has only a tiny following of a few people. Yes it runs this site, but not much else. Clojure isn't very easy to learn and I found the Racket ecosystem too minimum. The name sure doesn't help.
- dTal 8y agoCool names might be neccessary, but not sufficient, for popularity?