Re: Making Lisp popular - can it be done?

On Dec 27, 8:44 am, "jos...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <jos...@corporate-
world.lisp.de> wrote:
On Dec 27, 2:23 am, Tamas K Papp <tkp...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:05:27 -0800, philip.armitage wrote:
On Dec 27, 12:29 am, alien_guy <l...@xxxxx> wrote:
good heavens! if this is the "biggest thing that would improve Lisp's
popularity" then I'd rather CL remain unpopular as it is. why is it
that noobs want to advertise such primitive tools as ABLE or
CUSP/Eclipse ?

Scanning my inbox I have many emails from people who've contacted me to
say that they now program in Lisp because of ABLE. Is it not a good
thing that these people now program Lisp rather than just picking up
Python or Ruby? They had the curiosity to look a little beyond the
obvious choices...is it not a good idea to help them on their way?

Nothing is wrong with that, even though you have no counterfactual -- how
do you know that these people wouldn't have learned Lisp if they didn't
encounter ABLE?

So I'm curious as to why it would be better for Lisp to remain unpopular
than to provide tools that make it easier for new programmers to start
using the language. If you believe ABLE is harming Lisp, as you seem to
imply, then perhaps I should take the site down?

ABLE might be helping Lisp, but the effect is minuscule. I am amazed
that some people on CLL are arguing about the supreme importance of
development environments when discussing Lisp's "popularity". It is like
arguing that the Karamazov Brothers is not popular because it is printed
in the wrong font. Give me a break. Even if Lisp had the best IDE ever
(whatever that means), it would not become popular with the crowd that is
thrilled by Perl.

Go on working on ABLE by all means, more choice is always beneficial.
But please do not delude yourself into thinking that having another
editor/environment would make Lisp spread like wildfire.

I don't think the choice is black or white. Having a better IDE than
Emacs+SLIME+CL
would help some users. Note that these things are all very
'subjective'. People
have different needs. For a group of people Emacs+SLIME+CL is fine.
But for me it is not. Much too complex for the task at hand. I would
want a much simpler tool. Even though I use Emacs (and related)
for a long time, I tend to avoid SLIME+Emacs. It is really a
very capable tool and better than most editors for many tasks.
But the user interface is a nightmare (IMHO).

I would expect that many Lisp users like a simple, GUI-based IDE.
If developers build such IDEs and try to reach those users, it
is fine with me. There is some need for that. Clozure CL developers
collected in a short time more than $20k to pay
some developer improving the IDE. The commercial CL implementations
survive
in part because they have to offer something in the area of
IDEs.

Tamas

The DrScheme environment might fit the purpose.

Jurgen
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Making Lisp popular - can it be done?
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