Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Bigger is Better
In-Reply-To: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk's message of 1 Aug 1995 11:30:52 -0400
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References: <22601.9508011531@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 02 Aug 1995 11:25:51 GMT


In article <22601.9508011531@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

> > In article <8392.9507271711@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
> > 
> > > As for market failure, there are many reasons.  There was a huge
> > > increase in the PC market in which Lisp barely participated.
> > > But in alomst all cases, implementations weren't even aimed at
> > > this "mainstream" market.  Not were they aimed at replacing C
> > > at what C does.  The idea that Common Lisp tried and failed
> > > is misleading at best.  
> > 
> > There were certainly Common Lisp companies which tried and failed.
> 
> Tried what?  To replace C?  If so, they went about it in a rather
> odd way.  It proves nothing about the language.

When trying to sell Common Lisp to a client for a project, there are
two alternative possibilities if Common Lisp is not chosen:

 1. The project isn't done at all.
 2. The project is done in some other language.

I would claim that the majority of (intended) customers of Common Lisp
companies fall into category 2, and furthermore that the other
language in question is more likely to be C (at the time; now C++)
than anything else.  In this sense, the companies were trying to
displace (not replace) C.  Hence marketing from these companies which
emphasizes features of Common Lisp not found in C and optimization
possibilities to get Common Lisp to be as efficient as C code.

They usually didn't make claims that Common Lisp should replace C at
what (they believed) C does *best* (not what C does, unqualified).
But not always: The whole sad Lisp machine saga went in this
direction.  And, technically at least, these companies went very far
in showing that Lisp is far better than C for what C does best when
Lisp is used consistently.  But despite trying and doing pretty well
at demonstrating their case, they failed anyway.

I do agree that these companies went about their job in a strange way
--- hence their failure.  But hindsight is 20/20.

-- Harley Davis

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