Your analysis is quite astute. Lisp systems became big and resource-hungry ahead of newer, more affordable, less powerful machines being able to keep up.
Lisps were developed on departmental and corporate "big iron" computers from the beginning. Initially out of necessity, because those were the only viable computers that existed. Then later out of necessity because it was the only computers on which it would run well.
Very few languages (or other software!) that were popular on expensive big iron in the 1960-1985 era transitioned into the microcomputer era with their popularity intact, or at all.
For a window of time, microcomputer enthusiasts were simply not able to make any use of the big iron software at all. Those who programmed big iron at work and micros on the side did not pass on the knowledge from the big iron side to the newcomers who only knew consumer microcomputers. They just passed on stories and folklore. You can't pass on the actual knowledge without giving people the hands-on experience. And so the microcomputer culture came up with its own now iconic software.
Today we run descendants of Unix because Unix was actually developed pretty late into that big iron era, on smaller iron hardware; like a clumsy but workable ballerina, Unix readily made the hops to workstations having a few megabytes of memory like early Suns, to microcomputers like better-equipped 386 boxes.
There are stories from the 1980's of people developing some technology using Lisp, but then crystalizing it and rewriting it in something else, like C, to actually make it run on inexpensive hardware so they could market it. CLIPS is one example of this; there are others.
I don't think that people had no cycle to spare on 286 and 386 boxes. This is not true because even some much slower languages than Lisp were used for real programming. People used programs written in BASIC on 1 MHz 8 bit micros for doing real work. By and large, most of those people had no exposure to Lisp. BASIC was slow, but it fit resource-wise. Not fitting well into the memory is the deal breaker. Performance is not always a deal-breaker.
The Ashton-Tate dBase languages were another example of slow languages, yet widely used. They ran well on business microcomputers, and carried the selling story of being domain specific languages for database programming, something tremendously useful to a business.
All that said, our thinking today shouldn't be shackled today by some historical events 1980 to 1990.
Lisps were developed on departmental and corporate "big iron" computers from the beginning. Initially out of necessity, because those were the only viable computers that existed. Then later out of necessity because it was the only computers on which it would run well.
Very few languages (or other software!) that were popular on expensive big iron in the 1960-1985 era transitioned into the microcomputer era with their popularity intact, or at all.
For a window of time, microcomputer enthusiasts were simply not able to make any use of the big iron software at all. Those who programmed big iron at work and micros on the side did not pass on the knowledge from the big iron side to the newcomers who only knew consumer microcomputers. They just passed on stories and folklore. You can't pass on the actual knowledge without giving people the hands-on experience. And so the microcomputer culture came up with its own now iconic software.
Today we run descendants of Unix because Unix was actually developed pretty late into that big iron era, on smaller iron hardware; like a clumsy but workable ballerina, Unix readily made the hops to workstations having a few megabytes of memory like early Suns, to microcomputers like better-equipped 386 boxes.
There are stories from the 1980's of people developing some technology using Lisp, but then crystalizing it and rewriting it in something else, like C, to actually make it run on inexpensive hardware so they could market it. CLIPS is one example of this; there are others.
I don't think that people had no cycle to spare on 286 and 386 boxes. This is not true because even some much slower languages than Lisp were used for real programming. People used programs written in BASIC on 1 MHz 8 bit micros for doing real work. By and large, most of those people had no exposure to Lisp. BASIC was slow, but it fit resource-wise. Not fitting well into the memory is the deal breaker. Performance is not always a deal-breaker.
The Ashton-Tate dBase languages were another example of slow languages, yet widely used. They ran well on business microcomputers, and carried the selling story of being domain specific languages for database programming, something tremendously useful to a business.
All that said, our thinking today shouldn't be shackled today by some historical events 1980 to 1990.