Re: Y Store now C++

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

--Daniel Weinreb wrote:
> Paul Graham wrote:
> 
> >A friend of mine (who's probably on this list, actually)
> >went to interview there in about 2000.  He said they told
> >him they didn't need Lisp hackers, because they were going
> >to port the Store Editor to C++.  Why?  Because they didn't
> >think they'd be able to find Lisp hackers.
> >
> Yes, this is the flip side of the network-effect, the negative feedback 
> loop.
> Languages are a winner-take-all (of course actually I mean "a few winners
> take most") thing because of the network effects. And in light of the state
> of Lisp these days, I expect there are fewer and fewer people getting Lisp
> experience. 

I have some data that implies otherwise.  Sales of 
_ANSI Common Lisp_ are up over time, not down.  I think 
the reason is that Lispish languages like Python and Ruby 
are encouraging the more intellectually ambitious programmers 
to look into the root source of their ideas.

You could see this at LL1 and 2.  Both were packed.  
Programming languages are a hot topic at the moment.  And
no one at either could fail to be aware of the fact that
intellectually Lisp was casting a big shadow over the
proceedings.

At LL2, Matz (designer of Ruby) said that Ruby was a 
knockoff of Lisp and Smalltalk.  

--pg