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Jit came with 1.3.1 if I recall. Of course the real question is if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Including the people who know about lisp a

by jerven 12y ago

Jit came with 1.3.1 if I recall. Of course the real question is if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Including the people who know about lisp and java?

dikaiosune 12y ago
In the 15 years since this was published, maybe it's more accurate to talk about the family of languages, rather than just Lisp itself. I imagine that together all of the Lisps represent a lot more of the language popularity long tail then one might think. Of course this is just a hunch and I have no data. Also, Clojure seems pretty trendy among certain circles these days, which is a Lisp on the JVM (and Python, JS, etc).
virmundi 12y ago
I'm trying via Clojure. In general it seems that Lisp suffered from a closed ecosystem. I know that there are tons of simple Lisp interpreters for free. But there weren't any really good ones for free 10ish years ago with a permissive license. Take the Allegro CL used in the paper. The free version doesn't allow commercial use [1]. Sure, you could do things with LISP as we've seen with PG, but it's not anywhere as practical as Java was near it's inception. Java was free to use for whatever you wanted. It was quickly improving VM. Verbose < money. [1]http://franz.com/downloads/license.lhtml http://franz.com/downloads/license.lhtml
espadrine 12y ago
> if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Rewrites being uncommon, companies use the language that they started in. Start-ups use hyped languages that are considered good for the job in the current environment, in order to attract interest and inspire trust in their judgement. Languages that were frowned upon can go back into favour; JS did. However, it only did so thanks to both the success of the platform it was on and a functional language committee. Lisp has neither, and is therefore unlikely to rise to fame. If a company made a platform which recommended Lisp, and if a language committee rose to modernize the language and stifle innovation, it would start getting hype. I cannot see the future, but it seems unlikely, regardless of its technical merit.

by jerven 12y ago

Jit came with 1.3.1 if I recall. Of course the real question is if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Including the people who know about lisp and java?

dikaiosune 12y ago

In the 15 years since this was published, maybe it's more accurate to talk about the family of languages, rather than just Lisp itself. I imagine that together all of the Lisps represent a lot more of the language popularity long tail then one might think. Of course this is just a hunch and I have no data. Also, Clojure seems pretty trendy among certain circles these days, which is a Lisp on the JVM (and Python, JS, etc).

virmundi 12y ago

I'm trying via Clojure. In general it seems that Lisp suffered from a closed ecosystem. I know that there are tons of simple Lisp interpreters for free. But there weren't any really good ones for free 10ish years ago with a permissive license. Take the Allegro CL used in the paper. The free version doesn't allow commercial use [1]. Sure, you could do things with LISP as we've seen with PG, but it's not anywhere as practical as Java was near it's inception. Java was free to use for whatever you wanted. It was quickly improving VM. Verbose < money. [1]http://franz.com/downloads/license.lhtml http://franz.com/downloads/license.lhtml

espadrine 12y ago

> if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Rewrites being uncommon, companies use the language that they started in. Start-ups use hyped languages that are considered good for the job in the current environment, in order to attract interest and inspire trust in their judgement. Languages that were frowned upon can go back into favour; JS did. However, it only did so thanks to both the success of the platform it was on and a functional language committee. Lisp has neither, and is therefore unlikely to rise to fame. If a company made a platform which recommended Lisp, and if a language committee rose to modernize the language and stifle innovation, it would start getting hype. I cannot see the future, but it seems unlikely, regardless of its technical merit.