> That's entirely reasonable. But we're talking about someone who is being held up as an expert not knowing better. I'm told (I wasn't there either) that Lisp had considerable traction in commercial implementations in the enterprise before java was thought of. Dick Gabriel says so, he was there. So does Jamie Zawiniski who was also there and there are a few others so I think on the balance of probability that it's probably so. But yeah, I wasn't there.
Mostly on a few American companies.
Lisp Machines were hardly known outside US.
I heard about them at the university for the first time, in the mid-90's and I was already coding since the mid-80's.
Also on the university I got to learn about Smalltalk, Prolog, Caml Light, Oberon, Modula-3. All languages with GC, some of them used for system programing which is still considered an heresy today.
At least on my home country all those languages were considered esoteric by the average developer and seen as something that one is required to use while at university.
I got to learn about them, because one of my focus at the university was in compiler design, so I got to read a lot about language design.
Depends were you lived. I was at an Universities with maybe 20 professor working on AI related stuff. There were a few Lisp Machines. But there were all kinds of machines which had commercial Lisp systems: the University had a site license for Allegro CL. There was LispWorks, MCL, Golden Common Lisp. Earlier there was Lisp on the DEC 10, the VAX 11/780 and 750s.
Industry used Lisp in some projects. Philips medical research for example. Alcatel.
Mostly on a few American companies.
Lisp Machines were hardly known outside US.
I heard about them at the university for the first time, in the mid-90's and I was already coding since the mid-80's.
Also on the university I got to learn about Smalltalk, Prolog, Caml Light, Oberon, Modula-3. All languages with GC, some of them used for system programing which is still considered an heresy today.
At least on my home country all those languages were considered esoteric by the average developer and seen as something that one is required to use while at university.
I got to learn about them, because one of my focus at the university was in compiler design, so I got to read a lot about language design.
The average programmer without a degree? Not so.