So we say the language is terrible because the world around it changed? Using Common Lisp may be inconvenient because the standard is out of date, that doesn't mean the design (or language) was a failure in a historical sense.
I just think this whole argument is basically a straw man. Comparing something well specified that hasn't changed is 30 years to an entire class of hand wavy 'better languages' isn't an apples to apples comparison, and is, frankly, a dumb waste of time.
I'm less interested in questions like "how much credit do the original designers of CL deserve?" and more interested in "what languages should I consider for my new project?". Is Dylan a viable option? If not, why not? "It's not because it inherits common lisp's non-interoperability" is then an interesting point.
Yeah, but that would be bullshit to assume. I use for example LispWorks (commercial, proprietary) and Clozure CL (free, open source) on my Mac. Both have excellent interoperability with C and Unix. Both have a native Cocoa interface to the Mac.
I just think this whole argument is basically a straw man. Comparing something well specified that hasn't changed is 30 years to an entire class of hand wavy 'better languages' isn't an apples to apples comparison, and is, frankly, a dumb waste of time.