From: David H. Thornley
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Date: 
Message-ID: <5eiu6s$p2s@epx.cis.umn.edu>
In article <··········@fido.asd.sgi.com>,
Mike McDonald <·······@engr.sgi.com> 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.
>
I agree wholeheartedly.  At the University of Minnesota, Lisp itself is
taught in the AI Programming class, which I took because I was into AI.
So far, so good.  It was in this class that I noticed that algorithms
seemed to be transforming themselves into executable code considerably
faster and more smoothly than if I were using C, and that's what sold me.
If I had gone into software engineering or compilers or numerics (what
that CS department is really good at), I would never have used Common Lisp
on a fair-sized project and would never have been sufficiently interested
in pursuing it.

One of the introductory Computer Science courses is taught in Scheme using
Abelson and Sussman, which is, in my opinion, a *very* good idea.  There
was some resistance on the part of the students, of course:  one student
wrote on his midquarter that we were teaching him a pile of excrement.
(I was grading it, and wrote that if he was going to be a Computer Science
major, by gum we were going to teach him some computer *science*.)  Obviously,
he wasn't receptive to Scheme's simplicity.

Therefore, we have to have Lisp or Scheme early in the curriculum, not
labeled AI.  We have to have enough of it so that the students will get
a feel for it and have a chance to decide if it works for them.  Ideally,
of course, we should instill respect for various different programming
styles, such as procedural, object-oriented, functional, logical (which
you could all teach in Lisp, of course), but ideally the young whippersnappers
have a lot to learn and only four years.  When I was an undergrad, we had
to do our own conses, on the bare metal, with our teeth....  Excuse me.

Not that Lisp is likely to die.  It has sufficient advantages that I think
enough people will want to keep using it, and have their employees keep
using it.  It would be nice if it were more accessible to the amateur,
though.
--
David H. Thornley, known to the Wise as ········@cs.umn.edu                   O-
Disclaimer:  These are not the opinions of the University of Minnesota,
             its Regents, faculty, staff, students, or squirrels.
Datclaimer:  Well, maybe the squirrels.  They're pretty smart.