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From: "" <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
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Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:59:08 GMT
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[1] Re: "Why lisp failed in the marketplace" 

In reality, Lisp has been a phenominal success. 
It's one of the earliest computer languages that is still around and viable.
It's elders, Fortran and Cobol, have largely hung on due to the inertial of
a large base of existing and installed code. Lisp is still a viable choice
for
a new project with no existing code base. There have been hundreds of 
other computer languages invented since that have had less of a presence 
than Lisp.   


Lisp has been a successful choice for the many people who have used it. 


So how is it a "failure" ? 
  Well -- it's been a failure at making the Lisp Machine vendors or the Lisp

compiler & tools vendors rich. 
   Except as embedded in products like AutoCad, it's been a failure in being

a large presence in the PC world, which is where the mass market is. 
   Although it's been successful, considering all of it's advantages,
perhaps it ought
 to have been a much larger success. 

So it might be valid do say that Lisp failed in the mass market, but it's a 
distortion to say it failed in the marketplace.  


-- Steve Majewski   <sdm7g@Virginia.EDU> 

