I remember seeing this post on r/lisp earlier today, and the thought that I had then was that perhaps the reason why Lisp hasn't embraced "modernity" is because many Lisp programmers have not only embraced Lisp the language, but also Lisp the ecosystem, one that came from a world completely different from today's popular commercial systems. Lisp's heyday was during the time of Lisp machines and interactive environments/operating systems such as Xerox Interlisp and Symbolics Genera. While we don't have these things today (though thankfully Interlisp Medley was made open source), we still have Emacs as a surviving and thriving vestige of that world. I see the same thing in the Smalltalk community, except Smalltalk still has modern evolutions of the Smalltalk-80 environment in the forms of Squeak (which is more conservative) and Pharo (which has gone beyond Smalltalk-80 in terms of features). Many Smalltalkers relish the "other world"-ness of Smalltalk environments. These Lispers and Smalltalkers, among others, are still the keepers of the "the right thing" (coined by Richard Gabriel of "Worse is Better" fame) and "The Unix Haters Handbook" flames, and they want to evangelize their world.
I disagree with the notion that in order for a programming language (or any other software product, for that matter) to thrive, it must conform to the "standards" of the most popular platforms and tools. In fact, I argue that providing a compelling difference that is substantially better than the competition is what makes a programming language or software product thrive. Why are Lispers so attached to Emacs? Why are Smalltalkers so attached to their environments? For them, they feel that these things are compelling enough to provide an advantage over "standard" tools. I love vi, but I have great respect for Emacs' extensibility through its own Lisp.
I also disagree with the notion that a tool needs to be "modern" to be popular. Now, if modernity means running on current operating systems and adhering to current protocols, then I agree. However, if modernity means conforming to mainstream expectations at the expense of a tool's identity, then I disagree. Here on this forum we have a sizable, vocal segment who speaks out against "modern" trends such as the flat UI aesthetic, desktop environments that are designed for mobile computers instead of workstations, Electron apps, Web framework churn, and large siloed applications. Many people find Lisp, Smalltalk, Plan 9, and the suckless (https://suckless.org/philosophy/) community of traditional Unix users refuges from this type of "modernity," and they want to keep things the way that they are.
Now, this does not preclude Lispers (and Smalltalkers) from embracing mainstream platforms and tools and building solutions that will make Lisp a more attractive solution within these worlds. After all, I love these "other world" environments, but my livelihood relies on coding for mainstream platforms. However, I wish the author had a better appreciation regarding why Lisp programmers evangelize the Lisp world instead of making efforts to have Lisp conform more to mainstream platforms.
I don't know....FOSS tools have their advantages, and I don't think it's unreasonable for FOSS developers to ignore proprietary tools, even high-quality ones. I think the advent of affordable and later FOSS alternatives to Lisp and Smalltalk during the 1990s when the cost of Lisp and Smalltalk development tools were generally high helped hinder the adoption of Lisp and Smalltalk, and these communities are still dealing with the effects of this; while there are high-quality FOSS implementations like SBCL and Pharo, respectively, they have to compete with the likes of well-funded languages like Java, C#, and Python. Even newer languages such as Rust and Julia have had rather prodigious growth. In addition, no major company is backing FOSS implementations of Lisp and Smalltalk like how Python and Rust are being backed.
Perhaps one of the big keys toward broader adoption of Lisp is for a large corporation to embrace Lisp and to participate in the FOSS development of the Lisp ecosystem. Unfortunately it is hard for companies to solely focus on developer tools since they have to compete against FOSS offerings.
The cheapest LispWorks hobby license is $500 USD in North America [0].
The cheapest Allegro license is $599 USD [1].
If you're already a highly productive professional, this is probably totally worth it. For everyone else, there's no way you're going to get newbies to pay even close to that much, while DrRacket and Thonny are both free-as-beer and free-as-in-freedom.
> The cheapest LispWorks hobby license is $500 USD in North America [0].
>
> The cheapest Allegro license is $599 USD [1].
>
> If you're already a highly productive professional, this is probably totally worth it.
If I'm a solo developer, then sure, but right now I cannot think of a single non-trivial pro or hobby project that is run completely solo.
Asking contributors to shell out a sizable amount of money before they are able to submit PRs is a deal-breaker. It's just no going to happen no matter how productive those products make me, because next to none of my work and/or hobby code is done with the expectation that other people are not allowed to contribute.
Unfortunately the prices don't scale down, and there don't seem to be places that would offer installment payments...
Despite pretty sure being among better paid people in Poland, I'd need to save non trivial amount of my salary each month for a chance to buy necessary set of LW licenses for it to make sense :-(
I disagree with the notion that in order for a programming language (or any other software product, for that matter) to thrive, it must conform to the "standards" of the most popular platforms and tools. In fact, I argue that providing a compelling difference that is substantially better than the competition is what makes a programming language or software product thrive. Why are Lispers so attached to Emacs? Why are Smalltalkers so attached to their environments? For them, they feel that these things are compelling enough to provide an advantage over "standard" tools. I love vi, but I have great respect for Emacs' extensibility through its own Lisp.
I also disagree with the notion that a tool needs to be "modern" to be popular. Now, if modernity means running on current operating systems and adhering to current protocols, then I agree. However, if modernity means conforming to mainstream expectations at the expense of a tool's identity, then I disagree. Here on this forum we have a sizable, vocal segment who speaks out against "modern" trends such as the flat UI aesthetic, desktop environments that are designed for mobile computers instead of workstations, Electron apps, Web framework churn, and large siloed applications. Many people find Lisp, Smalltalk, Plan 9, and the suckless (https://suckless.org/philosophy/) community of traditional Unix users refuges from this type of "modernity," and they want to keep things the way that they are.
Now, this does not preclude Lispers (and Smalltalkers) from embracing mainstream platforms and tools and building solutions that will make Lisp a more attractive solution within these worlds. After all, I love these "other world" environments, but my livelihood relies on coding for mainstream platforms. However, I wish the author had a better appreciation regarding why Lisp programmers evangelize the Lisp world instead of making efforts to have Lisp conform more to mainstream platforms.