In article <··········@fido.asd.sgi.com>, ·······@engr.sgi.com (Mike
McDonald) wrote:
> I believe that the reason Lisp has failed to be widely accepted is that for
> most programmers, their first and only exposure to Lisp is in some rinky dink
> "Introduction to AI" class. At the end of which, if they're lucky, they might
> have written programs like Eliza and a checkers player. I can understand why
> they don't think Lisp is good for anything real.
Excellent point! Such a class usually uses a really bad (slow) implementation
of Lisp, and no decent parenthesis matching editor. Lisp has come a long way
from 1965, which is the kind of Lisp those courses teach.
> As for Symbolics part in the downfall of Lisp, sure, they contributed to the
> problem in some respects.
> When the Sun3 was first
> introduced, both Symbolics and Sun were about the same size, in terms of
> revenue. Symbolics decided that they were not in the "workstation" market.
> They were in the AI market. One of the all time stupidest moves ever.
Symbolics was crucified on the cross of 'gross margin', just like Apple
recently was. Some idiot investors who went to business school in the 1970's
got the hair-brained idea that you could charge a 'premium' price for a
'protected' market, and continue to get away with it. Both Apple and Symbolics
learned the hard way that _there are no 'protected' markets in the computer
business._ The idiots who made these decisions were out of both stocks long
ago, leaving the hulks to rust on the dustbin of history.
I think it is curious that Autodesk cannot kill AutoLisp, even after years
of trying very hard.
In article <·······················@10.0.2.1>, ······@netcom.com (Henry
Baker) wrote:
> In article <··········@fido.asd.sgi.com>, ·······@engr.sgi.com (Mike
> McDonald) wrote:
>
> > I believe that the reason Lisp has failed to be widely accepted is
that for
> > most programmers, their first and only exposure to Lisp is in some
rinky dink
> > "Introduction to AI" class. At the end of which, if they're lucky, they
might
> > have written programs like Eliza and a checkers player. I can understand why
> > they don't think Lisp is good for anything real.
>
> Excellent point! Such a class usually uses a really bad (slow) implementation
> of Lisp, and no decent parenthesis matching editor. Lisp has come a long way
> from 1965, which is the kind of Lisp those courses teach.
I know of a course where people teach Miranda with vi!
Well the theory is that people do learn unfamiliar concepts
with Lisp (recursion, list processing, combinators, ...),
so they think Lisp is weird. Teach imperative programming
uses Pascal or whatever. So people associated Lisp with
some unpleasant experiences ("thinking", "learning"!).
> I think it is curious that Autodesk cannot kill AutoLisp, even after years
> of trying very hard.
That is really funny. What is even more funny is that
they obviously not have tried to improve Autolisp. I
remember a posting from David Betz (the author of XLisp,
the Lisp that has been used by Autodesk), where he mentioned
that he has contacted them about improving AutoLisp and
the weren't interested. Still, people are using it.
So, there is another company that tries hard to
harm Lisp - still people use it.
--
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/