I spotted the first "why lisp is dead" cll thread last month from
"9 Apr 90 11:39:44 GMT". This was a bonafide lisp hacker who was
attributed the death to the high runtime license fees because of which
he could not use lisp for his expert system startup.
Lately I've been trying to fit the history of the lisp machine (as I've
read it) into a theological framework of good and evil and - to see the
results as the punishment of God on the stakeholders on whom the task
was given - the failure of the apparently "good" and the perverse
destiny that favours the "worse". Were the business models that
succeeeded less evil than the business model of those who were given
charge of the lisp machine? No. Were the competitors less evil or more
righteous than those lisp brahmins? No. Was it just a case of satan
favouring the non-lisp world because they were his children? No. His
children are uniformly distributed. Is it just a quirk of the endtimes?
Was lisp being spared the unforgivable charge of being the instrument of
the kingdom of the antichrist in bringing the world into digital
submission?
I'm afraid I haven't reached a satisfactory conclusion, Yet the
judgments have to been faced. Like Job. Nevertheless I believe after the
coming judgment on this world is over the programmers in the world to
come will be programming in lisp