When have I ever proclaimed the demise of LISP???

LISP is not dead nor dying. It will remain with us forever. However, LISP has never been a popular language. For a while in the 1970s and 1980s, it was relatively hot for AI research, but it quickly fell out of favour with the start of “AI winter.”

In those years, LISP was obscure compared to the likes of FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, C, even Smalltalk! I’ve always wondered why this was the case. My only conclusion was that its syntax was offputting…for whatever reason.

And that has remained true till today with Clojure.

Don’t get me wrong: I like LISP. But I’m also a realist.