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>> “I think the most innovative part of Clojure is the fact that it's actually used” Popularity is not “innovative”.

hevi_jos 8y ago
IMHO It is. It is like Windows. When it appeared it was significantly inferior to Unix options, but it made a hundred or a thousand times more people to experience computers. If a 1 to 10 percent of people is naturally innovative and creative, then the platform with most users ends innovating way more. Lisp use at first was restricted only to Academics, it was so inefficient that you even required a very special(and expensive) purpose computer to run it. Those academics were not paying the machine with their paycheck so they didn't care. More affordable solutions like c became popular and forced Lisp to improve(creating compilation pathways and so on), when it was obvious everyone was using the c toolchain(c++, objc, java).
- lispm 8y ago
  > Lisp use at first was restricted only to Academics Lisp was spreading in the 60s to everyone who had a mainframe or mini computer. In the 70s first applications were built and companies like BBN, Xerox, IBM started to use Lisp. In the 80s Common Lisp was standardized upon a DARPA initiative to have a single Lisp language for the applications they were prototyping or deploying in the military. The military got huge applications for battle management, battle simulation&training (like SIMNET), planning, design & construction developed by contractors. > it was so inefficient that you even required a very special(and expensive) purpose computer to run it Lisp developers required a personal workstation and thus they co-invented them in the 70s. Machines with 1 Megabyte or more RAM for a single user. Machines where one could develop and work with programs like Macsyma, an early computer algebra system widely used in maths and physics. > creating compilation pathways and so on efficient execution of Lisp on non-special-purpose hardware was available in the 70s for example with Maclisp and in the 80s with Common Lisp.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Definition of "innovative": Characterized by the creation of new ideas or things Popularity isn't innovation by its definition. These two issues are orthogonal. >> "It is like Windows ... but it made a hundred or a thousand times more people to experience computers." Right, but that's completely irrelevant and not innovation.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    "Innovative" is a great example of an aircraft-carrier-clearance word. The way this word is used in e.g. startup context, popularity can absolutely be innovative - after all, if Lisps were not popular, and now one suddenly is, it's a new thing therefore innovative (send funding rounds this way please). Honestly, I think the word "innovation" needs to be tabooed from the discussion to get meaningful questions and answers.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
IMO it depends on the lens through which you're looking. If "Clojure" in that sentence to you means the language and the features, then no, popularity is clearly not an innovative feature and is basically orthogonal. It obviously doesn't matter how popular the language is if what we're talking about is whether it supports <language feature x>. However, if "Clojure" in that sentence is interpreted in a wider, more general and necessarily less concrete sense -- to represent the language, ecosystem, branding, etc -- good marketing/advertising, community management, and general operations-level can be rife with places to innovate. An excellent language that never gets adopted has effectively zero value IMHO until it's corpse is ransacked by a language that does get adopted. People rediscover things that older languages have done all the while almost every week it seems -- creating a language and the requisite community to actually drive adoption can be considered innovative if the rest of the rest of the landscape is sufficiently similar. Clearly the Clojure project is doing something differently from the Common Lisp/Scheme/Racket crowd.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kbp 8y ago
  It's too early to say. Clojure's still very young in Lisp terms, so it's natural that it has more hype around it now than languages that were cool 30 years ago. It's also not exactly taking over the world, and I think you're forgetting the buzz Lisp had in the 80s. It will be an innovation in the sense you mean if it has wide adoption and hype in 2050, but it's certainly not anything unprecedented yet.
levosmetalo 8y ago
>>> “I think the most innovative part of Clojure is the fact that it's actually used” > Popularity is not “innovative”. But the way to reach popularity is innovative, at least for a lisp.

IMHO It is. It is like Windows. When it appeared it was significantly inferior to Unix options, but it made a hundred or a thousand times more people to experience computers. If a 1 to 10 percent of people is naturally innovative and creative, then the platform with most users ends innovating way more. Lisp use at first was restricted only to Academics, it was so inefficient that you even required a very special(and expensive) purpose computer to run it. Those academics were not paying the machine with their paycheck so they didn't care. More affordable solutions like c became popular and forced Lisp to improve(creating compilation pathways and so on), when it was obvious everyone was using the c toolchain(c++, objc, java).

lispm 8y ago
> Lisp use at first was restricted only to Academics Lisp was spreading in the 60s to everyone who had a mainframe or mini computer. In the 70s first applications were built and companies like BBN, Xerox, IBM started to use Lisp. In the 80s Common Lisp was standardized upon a DARPA initiative to have a single Lisp language for the applications they were prototyping or deploying in the military. The military got huge applications for battle management, battle simulation&training (like SIMNET), planning, design & construction developed by contractors. > it was so inefficient that you even required a very special(and expensive) purpose computer to run it Lisp developers required a personal workstation and thus they co-invented them in the 70s. Machines with 1 Megabyte or more RAM for a single user. Machines where one could develop and work with programs like Macsyma, an early computer algebra system widely used in maths and physics. > creating compilation pathways and so on efficient execution of Lisp on non-special-purpose hardware was available in the 70s for example with Maclisp and in the 80s with Common Lisp.
bad_user 8y ago
Definition of "innovative": Characterized by the creation of new ideas or things Popularity isn't innovation by its definition. These two issues are orthogonal. >> "It is like Windows ... but it made a hundred or a thousand times more people to experience computers." Right, but that's completely irrelevant and not innovation.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  "Innovative" is a great example of an aircraft-carrier-clearance word. The way this word is used in e.g. startup context, popularity can absolutely be innovative - after all, if Lisps were not popular, and now one suddenly is, it's a new thing therefore innovative (send funding rounds this way please). Honestly, I think the word "innovation" needs to be tabooed from the discussion to get meaningful questions and answers.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

IMO it depends on the lens through which you're looking. If "Clojure" in that sentence to you means the language and the features, then no, popularity is clearly not an innovative feature and is basically orthogonal. It obviously doesn't matter how popular the language is if what we're talking about is whether it supports <language feature x>. However, if "Clojure" in that sentence is interpreted in a wider, more general and necessarily less concrete sense -- to represent the language, ecosystem, branding, etc -- good marketing/advertising, community management, and general operations-level can be rife with places to innovate. An excellent language that never gets adopted has effectively zero value IMHO until it's corpse is ransacked by a language that does get adopted. People rediscover things that older languages have done all the while almost every week it seems -- creating a language and the requisite community to actually drive adoption can be considered innovative if the rest of the rest of the landscape is sufficiently similar. Clearly the Clojure project is doing something differently from the Common Lisp/Scheme/Racket crowd.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kbp 8y ago
It's too early to say. Clojure's still very young in Lisp terms, so it's natural that it has more hype around it now than languages that were cool 30 years ago. It's also not exactly taking over the world, and I think you're forgetting the buzz Lisp had in the 80s. It will be an innovation in the sense you mean if it has wide adoption and hype in 2050, but it's certainly not anything unprecedented yet.

levosmetalo 8y ago

>>> “I think the most innovative part of Clojure is the fact that it's actually used” > Popularity is not “innovative”. But the way to reach popularity is innovative, at least for a lisp.