Re: Lisp considered unfinished

[mucit@cs.rochester.edu (Bulent Murtezaoglu)]

>>>>> "Dave" == Dave Dyer <ddyer@netcom.com> writes:

    Dave> I have to agree with Dave Yost; In many respects, modern
    Dave> C/C++/Visual Basic development environments rival or exceed
    Dave> the best lisp has to offer.  The underlying language is
    Dave> still crap, but the gloss on top of it demos really well;
    Dave> and truthfully, goes a long way toward improving
    Dave> productivity.

"Demoing well" does not translate into productivity.  People usually don't
complain about Lisp development evironments (which are very good actually), 
but about efficiency/image size/common GUI/resource needs etc.  Given the 
memory/CPU power available on low end machines, and the increasing 
sophistication of off-the-shelf PC operating systems (OS/2 and windows 
promises), it might only be a matter of time before someone comes out with 
a Turbo-Lisp at a reasonable price ($200 or so).  Note, though, that 
visual basic is not really in the same league.  The way I have seen it used
is for cute and flashy windows programs that don't do anything requiring
remotely sophisticated or unusual algorithms.  A turbo-Lisp could do all 
visual Basic could do and more, but most people would not bother to learn 
Lisp when when they can do all they want in Basic.  If this is a problem at 
all, it has more to do with the local (US) pop computer/PC culture than Lisp.  

    Dave> Despite many millions that went into Symbolics, LMI, TI and
    Dave> Xerox (both directly and to their customers) there is not
    Dave> *ONE* really well known "lisp" success story to point to;
    Dave> and on the flip side, everybody knows how much was invested
    Dave> in those companies, and where they are now. [...]

Hmmm.  Off the top of my head I'd say Emacs, AutoCAD, and symbolic math
systems with Lispy engines inside.  Sure, MS Word and Excel aren't written
in Lisp, and they sell well and and serve their intended purpose but when
you try to do anything "unusual" with them you realize how crippled they
really are underneath that polished look.  On the language vendor side, both
Franz and Harlequin seem to be doing well and according to the rumors on the
net it wasn't the Lisp business that brought about Lucid's demise.

cheers,

BM