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"As for why lisp has been left behind in favor of other languages? Well, it's pretty much the same reason as why few people in America wear bowler hats these da

by moshez 17y ago

"As for why lisp has been left behind in favor of other languages? Well, it's pretty much the same reason as why few people in America wear bowler hats these days, they're out of fashion." But wait, I'm not understanding what you're trying to say. Bowler hats are a fashion, yes. But if I do wear a bowler hat, other than getting ridiculed, there is no effect on my life. I'm not suddenly three times smarter or more effective at work. If bowler hats made you three times smarter, even if they were out of fashion, I'm sure plenty of people would wear them. If LISP doesn't make me three times as efficient as $LANGUAGE, then, yes, it's merely a matter of fashion that it is not more popular -- but maybe it's also no big deal. Is that the point you were trying to make? Because if it isn't, blaming "fashion" is not advancing your case.

KirinDave 17y ago
Uh, I'm not sure how you draw a correlation between the "right" decision and "fashion" here. People make dumb but fashionable choices all the time. Hell, most "fashionable" clothes are as inexpensive to manufacture and procure resources for as the Kirkland Selects brand from Costco, but people spend huge sums of money on that clothing, sometimes just for the bragging rights of a brand name. In other words, "fashionable" can be "dumb", so you've made a point that doesn't damage my case at all. I do not think lisp "makes you smarter" in the sense that it's going to kick your IQ up notches. But I think Lisp's approach to software systems is a "still-clear pond" approach where you can see all the way down to the guts of the system, whereas a system like a Java runtime is more of a "murky lake." And, like I said, linguistically-oriented programming is something everyone should learn. It is a fascinating approach to programming that will frequently produce new insights into what existing language designers did and why (because a huge number of them know Lisp or Smalltalk, which are very close to each other on the power and syntactic flexibility spectrum).

by moshez 17y ago

KirinDave 17y ago

Uh, I'm not sure how you draw a correlation between the "right" decision and "fashion" here. People make dumb but fashionable choices all the time. Hell, most "fashionable" clothes are as inexpensive to manufacture and procure resources for as the Kirkland Selects brand from Costco, but people spend huge sums of money on that clothing, sometimes just for the bragging rights of a brand name. In other words, "fashionable" can be "dumb", so you've made a point that doesn't damage my case at all. I do not think lisp "makes you smarter" in the sense that it's going to kick your IQ up notches. But I think Lisp's approach to software systems is a "still-clear pond" approach where you can see all the way down to the guts of the system, whereas a system like a Java runtime is more of a "murky lake." And, like I said, linguistically-oriented programming is something everyone should learn. It is a fascinating approach to programming that will frequently produce new insights into what existing language designers did and why (because a huge number of them know Lisp or Smalltalk, which are very close to each other on the power and syntactic flexibility spectrum).