> Given the rapid increase in programmers across the globe, I'd bet on there being more LISP programmers now than at any other time in human history. So why the

> Given the rapid increase in programmers across the globe, I'd bet on there being more LISP programmers now than at any other time in human history. So why the obsession with popularity? I think that there's a difference between a concern with popularity, which this article demonstrates, and an obsession with popularity, which may afflict parts of the Lisp community (not LISP any more, at least in most dialects) but isn't clearly demonstrated here. If quantitative popularity is important at all, then surely it is percentages and not absolute numbers that are most important (e.g., in 2016, Hillary Clinton got more votes in Texas than in Delaware—15 times more!—but that's not the relevant number). Even if quantitative popularity isn't important, surely some basic level of popularity is to be desired by fans of the language; and it must continually be renewed, not taken for granted. Note that more than the popularity of the language as a practical tool is at stake here; the article specifically talks about the declining popularity of Lisp as a teaching language, and, whatever language you use later in your hacking career, it's a shame to embark on that career not having been exposed to the ideas of Lisp (although, to be fair, those ideas have disseminated so much into the mainstream that many of them can be at least as easily found outside of Lisp as inside it).