>>21
For the same reason Forth is dead: the language gives too much freedom.
I have noticed one pretty damn interesting thing about lispers.
>>15 said it most clearly here:
That is why learning it is difficult– you’re going up into a level abstraction that you never imagined could exist.
As someone who knows both Lisp and Forth, I'm getting progressively more baffled by this. Like, it doesn't seem like a big thing initially, but the more I look at it, the deeper it goes.
Learning Lisp is not difficult.
I mean, come on, really. Compare it to an entry course on linear algebra and shut the fuck up, ashamed.
Sure, for someone who sees the stuff for the first time it could be somewhat mindblowing, for a couple of hours. But look around, these days you have to understand anonymous functions, closures and higher-order functions to get a job as a Visual Basic code monkey. And guess what? Even Visual Basic code monkeys do understand this shit, because it's
simple.
While lispers have been saying for thirty years, and continue to say, that lisp is unpopular because the average programmer can't get map/filter/reduce and prefers "less powerful" languages.
Don't even get me started on homoiconicity. After a couple of months of learning to program, every non-retarded programmer gets a mindblowing revelation: his C compiler is a program too! And some other program could compose a text of a third C program, then feed it to the compiler, and run the result!
WHOA. Whoa, man. Wait, that's obvious, I'm a little ashamed of not getting it earlier. <- that's how the natural progression should look like, unless the person in question is retarded, right?
Learning lisp is not difficult. Functional programming is not difficult. Metaprogramming is not difficult. Any sane programmer gets her share of revelations about this shit, like, maybe two or three hours of blown mind all put together, then naturally transitions from awe to the real understanding, and feels a bit ashamed for not getting these simple things earlier.
Yet lisp fanboys ceaselessly repeat profound bullshit about the "levels of abstraction that you never imagined could exist". As I said, that's not a very big deal, on the surface. But as I think about the roots, the possible reasons for this behavior, something very much like the true answer for the Lisp Unpopularity Enigma comes looming from the depths. Every reader, except for lisp fanboys, must have realized what it is by now.