Comment by kenjackson
15 years ago
It's just a tradeoff.
But it's a tradeoff that has left Lisp with one major app in 40 years (Emacs)? A handful of notable apps... and that's it.
And why, in a space like phones, where one dev can produce an app in a week to months, are there no incredible Lisp applications? This seems like the perfect domain where one to three devs is all it takes to make a world-class app, and theoretically with the awesomeness discussed in the story we would expect at least one Lisp app that was just mind blowing. Of course that hasn't happened.
IMO, what I think happens are those people who are attracted to Lisp are those who like language purity/elegance and bask in it. They tend to be those that over-attribute the power of a language to the productivity of a developer. They have a great language, and are bright people, yet the result is nothing beyond the normal range of expected output. So they then try to create a rationale that combines their belief that they have a super language, with some odd external force that keeps that language from showing its true power to the outside world. Missing perhaps the most obvious thing which is that in terms of expressability/productivity, language is probably a 1.5x multiplier at best. But if they concede that the multiplier on productivity isn't at least 10x, they may have to admit that the beauty of the language is mostly a form of self-gratification.
Well, there are more than a few, but they tend to be highly specialized, knowledge-intensive apps that you've never heard of. Here's a list from one Lisp platform vendor -- I've worked on several of the projects listed there: http://www.franz.com/success/all_customer_apps.lhtml
Then there's ITA, recently acquired by Google, I assume you've heard of them? All Lisp, as far as I know.
I'd put ITA, ViaWeb, and a handful of others in the notable category. Although all I know about ITA is what they do (at a USA Today level), its Lisp (at the very least a large majority), and that they were bought by Google. Maybe ITA can be promoted to the Emacs level?
That vendor list is a nice reference, but I wouldn't be surprised if the D programming language vendor list was near that size. And no one uses D. Just imagine a similar list for virtually any other language commonly discussed on HN, from C/C++, to Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Javascript. I'd be surprised if Smalltalk wasn't 10x the size.
Don't get me wrong, I think its a great language. I just don't think any language gives the benefits that so many people seem to think they do, at least not general purpose languages. DSLs? Sure, they can give huge multipliers -- in their domain or maybe even for a specific domain. But not in general (and maybe those knowledge-intensive apps are those for which the multiplier is higher).