Subject: Re: Why is Lisp not more widely used?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1995/08/14
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <19950814T141715Z@naggum.no>

[Blake McBride]

|   The people involved with lisp appear to be only concerned with academic
|   use of lisp.  They seem to snub their noses at commercial users.  Case
|   in point - the maintainers of GCL and CLISP, two fundamentally portable
|   systems, insist on making their systems incompatible with mainstream
|   hardware for absolutely NO REASON.

hardware?  mainstream _hardware_?  you seem to be talking about mainstream
_software_ on that hardware, not the hardware.  be accurate when flaming!

|   CLISP uses variable argument C macros (not ANSI C) and functions and
|   modules so large that they can not be compiled by any commercial
|   compiler.

stop lying, and maybe people will listen to you.

|   Their attitude is that any compiler which can't handle those two
|   features is garbage.

of _course_ it is!  compiler vendors who cripple their products on purpose
should be flogged.  it's a _bug_ in that sorry excuse for a "commercial"
compiler.

|   The maintainers of CLISP flat out told me they will not integrate and
|   support patches for "brain dead" [commercial] compilers.

I don't think they are representative of the lisp community, though.  you
obviously haven't seen the comment in the timezone tables about PRC, yet.

|   A simple change which would make GCL entirely portable and allow GCL's
|   usage in commercial environments.

please explain.

|   Especially if they won't integrate and support the changes thereafter.

you have obviously mistaken free software for commercially supported
software.  that is just not the case.  "you want it, you do it."  if you
would like to pay for somebody else to do it, go ahead.  quit whining.

|   It's kind of a chicken or egg problem.  As long as you have an
|   anti-commercial attitude only a few academics (with no financial
|   resources) use the system.

have you asked yourself why _anyone_ who has made software for free would
_ever_ want to do as you ask them to?  it could be as simple as the fact
that you behave like a freaking manager who thinks he has paid for support
(or "support").  you haven't.  you got it for free.  behave accordingly.

|   Look at how well netscape is doing.

my gawd.  have you looked at _what_ Netscape is doing?  you'd have to have
cat food for brains to write software like that.  yes, it's marketed very
well, and it's extremely glitzy.  big deal.  I suppose you think Windows is
cool, too.  popularity is the new holy grail, and quality is too heavy a
burden to carry while running after it.

|   How well do you think they'd be doing if they arbitrarily insisted on
|   requiring academic environments?

take a look at their licences, you dimwit.  I cannot in good conscience use
Netscape because it asks me to accept an evil licence agreement when it
starts up, and this is at an academic site.

|   Remember the commercial world is where the resources are.

yeah, right.  the commerical world is where the managers are, too, who have
as much brains as your average toad when it comes to what is or is not good
software.  Netscape and Windows are manager-type products: rotten code with
nice packaging.  that's all they care about.  would _you_ care to go into
that kind of prostitution?  I guess you would.  well, I don't, and I'm
still a free man, running my own consulting business, writing and helping
to write free software because I'm sick and tired of those brainless twits
deciding what's good and what isn't.  the commercial world may have money,
but that is in no way related to whether they have good people.

|   I'm frustrated!  I love lisp and want to use it on real life
|   (commercial) projects.  Popular hardware is now able to host such
|   environments.  Lisp now has a chance!  Why do you people keep snubbing
|   your noses at the commercial world?

that's your own frustration, dude, not "you people".  do you think it would
be appropriate if some of us who are happy users of free Lisp environments
took _you_ as the paradigm of "commercial people", and waxed frustrated
about how "you people" in business never give us any money and always want
more features, all the while consciously and deliberately crippling both
software and hardware to make _our_ life unnecessarily harder?

if there's animosity between the commercial and the academic world, it's
your pathetic kind that creates it.  now go away and learn to respect other
people's voluntary and charitable contributions to your well-being without
demanding anything back, like that "commercial world" does for shoddy
products and rotten support.

note that the Lisp vendors are not behaving like that.  the Lisp vendors I
have talked to have been very kind and friendly, always helpful, staffed by
excellent people.  it's in your "mainstream" world that the shitheads rule.
you play _their_ game, at _their_ beck and call, don't you?

#<Erik 3017398635>
-- 
help!  I'm lost in an n-dimensional universe and I don't know what n is!