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> Lots of people can learn some basic Lisp or simple Lisp dialects. But once they use actual features of Lisp, which allows every user to radically change the l

> Lots of people can learn some basic Lisp or simple Lisp dialects. But once they use actual features of Lisp, which allows every user to radically change the language, the things get tough... in the industry stuff like that is not liked. They want tools and developers which are more predictable. This is such a silly and elitist argument that I've always wanted to dismiss it outright on those principles, but I think it can finally be dismissed on factual grounds now that Clojure is a thing and is actually popular in the industry. The argument that people just can't get Lisp was always an embarrassing position to stake out, but now it no longer holds any water too. Everyone has their own opinion as to why Common Lisp is having popularity trouble. Mine is that the spec is twenty years old and has no reasonable process for moving forward. I think a number of people are of the opinion that the spec represents stone tablets handed down by God and is completely perfect, but I on the other hand find a number of useful elements missing that are difficult or impossible to implement universally with macros. IMO, Common Lisp's popularity problem flows from its lack of evolution.

lispm 12y ago
> This is such a silly and elitist argument that I've always wanted to dismiss it outright on those principles, Calling an argument silly and elitist does not help your case much. > Clojure is a thing and is actually popular in the industry. The number of Clojure developers and its percentage is tiny. Far from 'popular'. It's also in a different stage of the hype cycle. > The argument that people just can't get Lisp was always an embarrassing position to stake out, but now it no longer holds any water too. You need to actually read what I said. Basics of simple Lisps are relatively easy to learn, still many people fail at it. I've seen it in computer science University courses where only like 10% were able to write anything useful in Lisp, struggling with recursion, graphs, dynamic typing, ... Few ever got so far that I would let them program macros.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Few ever got so far that I would let them program macros If you start with the assumption that it's for "few people", and teach it like that, then few of your students will get it. Yet, people have used Scheme and CL as a first language, and even Haskell, and students were able to pick them just fine.

lispm 12y ago

> This is such a silly and elitist argument that I've always wanted to dismiss it outright on those principles, Calling an argument silly and elitist does not help your case much. > Clojure is a thing and is actually popular in the industry. The number of Clojure developers and its percentage is tiny. Far from 'popular'. It's also in a different stage of the hype cycle. > The argument that people just can't get Lisp was always an embarrassing position to stake out, but now it no longer holds any water too. You need to actually read what I said. Basics of simple Lisps are relatively easy to learn, still many people fail at it. I've seen it in computer science University courses where only like 10% were able to write anything useful in Lisp, struggling with recursion, graphs, dynamic typing, ... Few ever got so far that I would let them program macros.

coldtea 12y ago
>Few ever got so far that I would let them program macros If you start with the assumption that it's for "few people", and teach it like that, then few of your students will get it. Yet, people have used Scheme and CL as a first language, and even Haskell, and students were able to pick them just fine.