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So it sounds like the JPL's reason (at least the reason they gave - whether you want to believe it was some anti-Lisp conspiracy or just bad office politics is

So it sounds like the JPL's reason (at least the reason they gave - whether you want to believe it was some anti-Lisp conspiracy or just bad office politics is your own business) was that Lisp was too big. I wonder if Scheme would have been a better fit? (It was certainly around in 1988; SICP was written in 1985.) There's something about Lisp that gives it a reputation as inherently individualist (as opposed to the "workers are expendable cogs" project management model that the linked article associates with Java). Same with Forth. At this point, the Lisp community seems to encourage that idea, but what in the language itself supports this? I hear arguments that it's a harder language, but let's not kid ourselves. I think programming well in, say, C++ or Haskell is much, much harder. (Should a language be hard to use well?) Or: Lisp code is hard to read. Potentially, sure -- the readability of the code is more dependent than most languages on the developers' abilities to name things well. (Same with Forth.) You can write unmaintainable garbage in any language, though - just copy and paste things where they're used instead of naming and referencing them, give variables meaningless names, etc. Just add water and presto, big ball of mud. (http://www.laputan.org/mud/ http://www.laputan.org/mud/) Also, most programmers are probably used to good editors handling paren balancing in any language. Besides being significantly different from the main languages people are exposed to, what? All it takes for a language to be different from e.g. C/Java is to not be C/Java. Is it because you can create your own idioms / extensions to the core language? I also think the syntax is something of a red herring - sure, you may dislike the syntax, but I can think of popular languages that have disastrous syntaxes. (I guess Dylan could be a control group here, but I don't know anybody who has real experience with it, let alone its reputation among management.) No answers, but I'd really like to know. Working on my own language, and all that. Also: I'm most definitely not looking for thinly-veiled bragging about how "not everyone can handle such a superior language" either, because... come on.

jrockway 18y ago
There's something about Lisp that seems inherently individualist. At this point, the Lisp community seems to encourage that idea, but what in the language itself supports this? I think the people that choose Lisp select it after a study of the various options. Choosing and evaluating programming languages is not a social activity -- you do it by yourself. Contrast this to Java programmers, who use Java because it's what they learned in school. They aren't individualistic, they just do what they are told. (Java's popularity is helped by the "tools" are "easy to use". SLIME and Emacs are "hard to use", so you have to want to use them to be able to use them. I use quotes because I disagree with the sentiment. Eclipse is a nightmare to use. Emacs is a dream.) As for Java's popularity, I think it comes down to social factors rather than differences in the syntax of the language. Java developers want less money than Lisp developers. It's also easier to hire Java developers, because you can just require a Sun certification. Easy!
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  So you'd say that more Lisp-users tend to be self-taught / come to the language themselves, rather than using $current_job_security_language? This isn't specifically about Lisp vs. Java, though - I don't see people have this sort of kneejerk reaction about Python, for example. (Though Python seems to have been carefully designed to give a first impression of being clean and easy to use. I'd say it mostly is, but it definitely gives a good first impression.)
- gaius 18y ago
  I don't think that's true. Lisp jobs are few and far between; people who want them really want them. There are many jobs that are like that. Here in the UK nurses and firemen are badly paid, that's because there's always someone who wants the job enough to do it for barely living wages. The only way to be a well-paid Lisp programmer is to work somewhere where they wouldn't even dream of using Java.
  - jrockway 18y ago
    I've found that the better a job suits me, the more they are willing to pay me. (I have never looked for a Lisp job, though.)
- scylla 18y ago
  > Java developers want less money than Lisp developers. This wasn't true even 5 years ago. People flooded into Java/J2EE because it was considered 'Enterprise' and paid a lot more than alternatives. Even today Java pays more than .NET or Rails and certainly PHP in large companies.
deleted 18y ago
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gruseom 18y ago
By "inherently individualist" do you mean that Lisp programmers tend not to work in teams? Or just that there aren't many of them, so they tend to be thinly scattered and thus isolated? My current pet theory is that only a minority of people feel comfortable thinking in s-expressions. For the majority, trees with many levels of nesting aren't a natural medium for expressing their thoughts. (I don't know why this would be, but it's worth pointing out that human language has a very low tolerance for nesting (in fact you almost never see it go beyond level 1)). I know two very good programmers who gave Lisp a good try and just don't feel comfortable in it. So I don't buy the inferiority argument either. Interestingly, both of those guys strongly prefer Smalltalk, which is arguably as close to Lisp-with-all-those-trees-unwound as anyone has got. Edit: I'll add that if the nesting theory is correct, I feel lucky to be in the minority that finds it comfortable to build programs that way... what I'm able to do in Lisp far outstrips what I was able to do before.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  I'm trying to figure out what specific characteristics give it the kind of reputation it has. Good observation about Lisp vs. Smalltalk, by the way. (I also wonder why Smalltalk isn't more popular...)
  - gruseom 18y ago
    Ok, here I think you need to look at history rather than the languages themselves. Once Lisp (and Smalltalk, for different reasons) became branded as failures, that reputation was fixed in 90+% of people's minds, and it remains so. This is all the more entrenched because of the bias in favor of the newest things in computing. For most people, that a 40-year old failure might be better than something new and popular just isn't possible.
    - silentbicycle 18y ago
      So, you think it's a legacy of the AI winter?
      - 18y ago
DaniFong 18y ago
Lisp attracts the sort of people who want to bend the language to their will. As such, these same people bend systems, programs, and organizations to their will. Not particularly easy to manage.
- olavk 18y ago
  bends organizations to their will - if that were the case, Lisp would be used at many more organizations (including Google and JPL), wouldn't it?
  - albertcardona 18y ago
    Precisely it would not be.
  - Darmani 18y ago
    Unfortunately, organizations have a much higher Young's modulus than languages.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      Unlike languages, they nearly always push back...
pavelludiq 18y ago
I personally like scheme, because its beautifully weird. If something is weird, even if beautiful, the type of people that like it are not the best of team players. You don't write poetry in teams. I don't know how much of a team player i am, but from early childhood i got used to doing stuff mostly alone. I guess i could fit well in an extra small team, where one has more autonomy.
- gaius 18y ago
  The but I'm a poet! attitude partially explains Lisp's unpopularity with large organizations.
  - pavelludiq 18y ago
    Thats strange because i see a lot of job adds requiring creativity and passion. Unfortunately big companies understand creativity as "you should be smart enough to understand your boss's vision" and passion as "You should just do your job and not whine about it".
    - thalur 18y ago
      They also seem to define teamwork as "doing what your boss tells you without pointing out ways to do it better" and leadership as "passing on your boss's vision to the poor souls working for you, while not passing back any complaints/problems to your boss".
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    Rightly so, I think. Debugging somebody's "poetry" can really suck. I'm not so sure this is necessarily a Lisp thing, though. (And, I'd rather see somebody get creative in code by finding unexpectedly elegant and simple solutions, rather than by adding lots of flourishes.)
brlewis 18y ago
No, Scheme would not be a better fit, speaking as someone who codes Scheme day and night. Yes Scheme is smaller, but that's in reality, which makes it totally unrelated to the reasons for rejecting CL.

jrockway 18y ago

There's something about Lisp that seems inherently individualist. At this point, the Lisp community seems to encourage that idea, but what in the language itself supports this? I think the people that choose Lisp select it after a study of the various options. Choosing and evaluating programming languages is not a social activity -- you do it by yourself. Contrast this to Java programmers, who use Java because it's what they learned in school. They aren't individualistic, they just do what they are told. (Java's popularity is helped by the "tools" are "easy to use". SLIME and Emacs are "hard to use", so you have to want to use them to be able to use them. I use quotes because I disagree with the sentiment. Eclipse is a nightmare to use. Emacs is a dream.) As for Java's popularity, I think it comes down to social factors rather than differences in the syntax of the language. Java developers want less money than Lisp developers. It's also easier to hire Java developers, because you can just require a Sun certification. Easy!

silentbicycle 18y ago
So you'd say that more Lisp-users tend to be self-taught / come to the language themselves, rather than using $current_job_security_language? This isn't specifically about Lisp vs. Java, though - I don't see people have this sort of kneejerk reaction about Python, for example. (Though Python seems to have been carefully designed to give a first impression of being clean and easy to use. I'd say it mostly is, but it definitely gives a good first impression.)
gaius 18y ago
I don't think that's true. Lisp jobs are few and far between; people who want them really want them. There are many jobs that are like that. Here in the UK nurses and firemen are badly paid, that's because there's always someone who wants the job enough to do it for barely living wages. The only way to be a well-paid Lisp programmer is to work somewhere where they wouldn't even dream of using Java.
- jrockway 18y ago
  I've found that the better a job suits me, the more they are willing to pay me. (I have never looked for a Lisp job, though.)
scylla 18y ago
> Java developers want less money than Lisp developers. This wasn't true even 5 years ago. People flooded into Java/J2EE because it was considered 'Enterprise' and paid a lot more than alternatives. Even today Java pays more than .NET or Rails and certainly PHP in large companies.

deleted 18y ago

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gruseom 18y ago

By "inherently individualist" do you mean that Lisp programmers tend not to work in teams? Or just that there aren't many of them, so they tend to be thinly scattered and thus isolated? My current pet theory is that only a minority of people feel comfortable thinking in s-expressions. For the majority, trees with many levels of nesting aren't a natural medium for expressing their thoughts. (I don't know why this would be, but it's worth pointing out that human language has a very low tolerance for nesting (in fact you almost never see it go beyond level 1)). I know two very good programmers who gave Lisp a good try and just don't feel comfortable in it. So I don't buy the inferiority argument either. Interestingly, both of those guys strongly prefer Smalltalk, which is arguably as close to Lisp-with-all-those-trees-unwound as anyone has got. Edit: I'll add that if the nesting theory is correct, I feel lucky to be in the minority that finds it comfortable to build programs that way... what I'm able to do in Lisp far outstrips what I was able to do before.

silentbicycle 18y ago
I'm trying to figure out what specific characteristics give it the kind of reputation it has. Good observation about Lisp vs. Smalltalk, by the way. (I also wonder why Smalltalk isn't more popular...)
- gruseom 18y ago
  Ok, here I think you need to look at history rather than the languages themselves. Once Lisp (and Smalltalk, for different reasons) became branded as failures, that reputation was fixed in 90+% of people's minds, and it remains so. This is all the more entrenched because of the bias in favor of the newest things in computing. For most people, that a 40-year old failure might be better than something new and popular just isn't possible.
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    So, you think it's a legacy of the AI winter?
    - 18y ago

DaniFong 18y ago

Lisp attracts the sort of people who want to bend the language to their will. As such, these same people bend systems, programs, and organizations to their will. Not particularly easy to manage.

olavk 18y ago
bends organizations to their will - if that were the case, Lisp would be used at many more organizations (including Google and JPL), wouldn't it?
- albertcardona 18y ago
  Precisely it would not be.
- Darmani 18y ago
  Unfortunately, organizations have a much higher Young's modulus than languages.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    Unlike languages, they nearly always push back...

pavelludiq 18y ago

I personally like scheme, because its beautifully weird. If something is weird, even if beautiful, the type of people that like it are not the best of team players. You don't write poetry in teams. I don't know how much of a team player i am, but from early childhood i got used to doing stuff mostly alone. I guess i could fit well in an extra small team, where one has more autonomy.

gaius 18y ago
The but I'm a poet! attitude partially explains Lisp's unpopularity with large organizations.
- pavelludiq 18y ago
  Thats strange because i see a lot of job adds requiring creativity and passion. Unfortunately big companies understand creativity as "you should be smart enough to understand your boss's vision" and passion as "You should just do your job and not whine about it".
  - thalur 18y ago
    They also seem to define teamwork as "doing what your boss tells you without pointing out ways to do it better" and leadership as "passing on your boss's vision to the poor souls working for you, while not passing back any complaints/problems to your boss".
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Rightly so, I think. Debugging somebody's "poetry" can really suck. I'm not so sure this is necessarily a Lisp thing, though. (And, I'd rather see somebody get creative in code by finding unexpectedly elegant and simple solutions, rather than by adding lots of flourishes.)

brlewis 18y ago

No, Scheme would not be a better fit, speaking as someone who codes Scheme day and night. Yes Scheme is smaller, but that's in reality, which makes it totally unrelated to the reasons for rejecting CL.