Martin Raspaud wrote:
> If lisp is so great (which I tend to believe, actually) are their so
> many people not using it ?
>
> I mean there must be flaws or something, otherwise everybody would
use
> it I suppose.
That is similar to the question, "Why did representative democracy not
catch on before? There must be something wrong with it." The idea's
been around for quite a while. But for millenia, people preferred
dictatorship. In fact, you may notice the term "benevolent dictator"
tends to be absent when discussing lisp.
Was there a horrible flaw with the Amiga? Is there something incredible
about MS Windows? Do Big Macs taste that much better than Chalupas?
I'm sleepy, so maybe you won't consider that a satisfying answer. I am
not a social historian of the computing world, but "today's barriers of
adoption" are clear. For all purposes, lisp is in the "early adopter"
category, ironically enough. Programming languages are programs; and
programs often contend with issues like marketing/PR/propaganda.
And I sincerely hope that lisp won't "dominate" over people who don't
want to use it. We should all hope that age is over, because that's a
horrible thing. There are many different kinds of programmers, from
those who use the simple mouseclick language of GUIs, to beyond. And
you know, people often fear that lisp is too expressive! Good, let
people stay away from lisp then unless they wish to think in it.
Otherwise good code can not reasonably be expected.
With respect to flaws, I have little doubt you can locate flaws
relative to some context. I do not know what context you use, but I can
certainly invent contexts where I would use a different language. I am
always prepared to read and write other languages, because they all
have contexts where they are flawed.
MfG,
Tayssir
> Take for example speed. People say "C is faster than lisp". We
(lispers)
> reply "With proper declaration, Lisp is as fast as C". But, people,
how
> difficult is that ! I mean I've been declaring things in my code to
make
> it efficient, and now I got something full of "the" and "declare",
which
> makes the code lot less readable, and I don't mention the time I
spend
> on it...
> Ok, maybe I'm wrong, but I think we have to admit lisp is not as
> straightforward as C for exemple.
>
> However, I'm really keen on lisp at the moment.
> I'm just an old newbie, but I hope you get my point somehow.