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C++ at least had the benefit of industry and OOP trend behind it. It was rather fortunate in this case. I've argued elsewhere on HN that Common Lisp died becau

C++ at least had the benefit of industry and OOP trend behind it. It was rather fortunate in this case. I've argued elsewhere on HN that Common Lisp died because they were closed and secretive at the exact moment they needed to go the opposite route. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/lisp/part4/faq-doc-10.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/lisp/part4/f... Around 2004, Lisp was having a bit of a revival of sorts. Lisp was becoming trendy, various blogs and web sites were created. But the only documentation you could find was the HyperSpec. Which, as anyone that had the misfortune of reading, is awful as a reference. It's both too technical for casual software developers and not official enough for language implementers. There were two free, open source Lisps available (CMUCL, CLISP) and both were rather unloved and clunky at best. Even Linus had a bit of trouble getting his hands on POSIX standards. Imagine Linux dying because it couldn't follow standards that Linus could not acquire. By the mid-to-late '90s the writing was already on the wall. Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby followed no standard. It became common for the free implementation to be the standard. Clojure arrived and largely filled the Lisp void. Racket attempted a similar movement, by renaming itself from PLT Scheme to something that removes the emphasis on any particular standard. If you want Lisp today, though, you're probably doing Clojure.

rlonstein 6y ago
I agree with the thrust of your argument as I was learning Common Lisp around then but you make a factual mistake: > Around 2004... There were two free, open source Lisps available (CMUCL, CLISP) and both were rather unloved and clunky at best. SBCL and ECL existed and were quite usable. The documentation was as you say, another story. There was the HyperSpec, copies of CLtL, and a number of out-of-print or hard to find books that described some kind of Lisp. It was hard to be a tyro without a guide.
varjag 6y ago
Honestly, attempts to pin down Lisp's obscurity to a single cause are almost as old as Lisp itself. No, Lisp did not miss out because people could not read the docs; it simply was as far from XML/Java zeitgeist then as from UNIX/C/C++ before. > Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby followed no standard. It became common for the free implementation to be the standard. And I mean look how well it worked with transitions to Perl 6 and Python 3.
a0-prw 6y ago
> Which, as anyone that had the misfortune of reading, is awful as a reference. It's both too technical for casual software developers and not official enough for language implementers. I don't think this is fair. It is a very useful reference, and it doesn't claim to be a tutorial: " 1.1.1 Scope and Purpose The specification set forth in this document is designed to promote the portability of Common Lisp programs among a variety of data processing systems. It is a language specification aimed at an audience of implementors and knowledgeable programmers. It is neither a tutorial nor an implementation guide."
lispm 6y ago
> I've argued elsewhere on HN that Common Lisp died It's not dead, it just smells funny. > not official enough for language implementers The HyperSpec is just a different text rendering -> here as Hypertext. The content of the official Common Lisp standard document is in the HyperSpec. As a language implementor it makes no/zero/null difference reading the HyperSpec or the official standards document in PDF format. > Which, as anyone that had the misfortune of reading I like it and have been using a lot. > There were two free, open source Lisps available (CMUCL, CLISP) GCL, OpenMCL, ECLS, SBCL, ...

rlonstein 6y ago

I agree with the thrust of your argument as I was learning Common Lisp around then but you make a factual mistake: > Around 2004... There were two free, open source Lisps available (CMUCL, CLISP) and both were rather unloved and clunky at best. SBCL and ECL existed and were quite usable. The documentation was as you say, another story. There was the HyperSpec, copies of CLtL, and a number of out-of-print or hard to find books that described some kind of Lisp. It was hard to be a tyro without a guide.

varjag 6y ago

Honestly, attempts to pin down Lisp's obscurity to a single cause are almost as old as Lisp itself. No, Lisp did not miss out because people could not read the docs; it simply was as far from XML/Java zeitgeist then as from UNIX/C/C++ before. > Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby followed no standard. It became common for the free implementation to be the standard. And I mean look how well it worked with transitions to Perl 6 and Python 3.

a0-prw 6y ago

> Which, as anyone that had the misfortune of reading, is awful as a reference. It's both too technical for casual software developers and not official enough for language implementers. I don't think this is fair. It is a very useful reference, and it doesn't claim to be a tutorial: " 1.1.1 Scope and Purpose The specification set forth in this document is designed to promote the portability of Common Lisp programs among a variety of data processing systems. It is a language specification aimed at an audience of implementors and knowledgeable programmers. It is neither a tutorial nor an implementation guide."

lispm 6y ago

> I've argued elsewhere on HN that Common Lisp died It's not dead, it just smells funny. > not official enough for language implementers The HyperSpec is just a different text rendering -> here as Hypertext. The content of the official Common Lisp standard document is in the HyperSpec. As a language implementor it makes no/zero/null difference reading the HyperSpec or the official standards document in PDF format. > Which, as anyone that had the misfortune of reading I like it and have been using a lot. > There were two free, open source Lisps available (CMUCL, CLISP) GCL, OpenMCL, ECLS, SBCL, ...