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From: wware@world.std.com (Will Ware)
Subject: Re: Microsoft Common Lisp?
Message-ID: <E4wA0D.7o7@world.std.com>
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Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 22:48:13 GMT
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Ken Tilton (tilt@bway.net) wrote:
> why don't we appeal to the hacker in Bill Gates and ask him to do a
> Microsoft Common Lisp? ...get up a petition explaining why MsCL would be a
> great thing (newsgroup project) and all sign it.
 
MSCL is an interesting idea, but Gates probably doesn't decide anything on
the basis of anything so egalitarian as a petition. Making a case for its
viability as a business decision would be more influential. An example might
be a petition, not asking that he develop and market MSCL, but representing
people who are pretty sure they would use it if he did. Show him some
market share and maybe he'll start to drool.
 
Another thing that might have some influence would be to point out cases
where a business had a win by using Lisp. I remember reading one of these
recently, probably in this newsgroup, but now I don't remember what the
story was. And it may be that Gates himself is unaware that Lisp is used
within Microsoft; it couldn't hurt to point that out.
 
Elsewhere in this thread, somebody pointed out Gates is a Basic fan. If he
allows his own preferences to affect his business decisions, perhaps he can
be won over with features of Lisp that are remniscent of Basic. The big one
that springs to mind is instant feedback, typing something and getting an
immediate response.
 
If MS came out with a Visual Common Lisp, it would violently thrust Lisp
into common usage. On the one hand, it would leave in its wake a vanguard
of people wearing "I hacked Lisp before Lisp was cool" T-shirts, and many
of them would rue the loss of Lisp's status as arcana. On the other hand,
there would quickly follow the creation of all kinds of tools and libraries
to make life easier for Lisp programmers (mostly commercial of course, but
the gnu-ish stuff would continue to thrive). And the world would be made a
better place for having Lisp in a much more prominent role.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Will Ware <wware@world.std.com> web <http://world.std.com/~wware/>
PGP fingerprint   45A8 722C D149 10CC   F0CF 48FB 93BF 7289
