How many people use or used Lisp?
in [Lisp]
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From: Rob Warnock on 15 Mar 2010 21:07 Tim Bradshaw <tfb(a)tfeb.org> wrote: +--------------- | Kazimir Majorinc said: | > How many people use Lisp (all dialects combined) today? | > My guess: 3000, based on the membership on various Lisp forums. | > Anyone with better guess? | | 8 +--------------- "99, Coach! 99!!" [Extra points to anyone who knows the joke to which that is the punchline...] -Rob ----- Rob Warnock <rpw3(a)rpw3.org> 627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/> San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Kazimir Majorinc on 16 Mar 2010 05:20 On 15.3.2010 11:26, Pascal Costanza wrote: > The people who use such forums probably represent only a minor fraction > of the number of actual Lisp users. It might be true - with one important exception: Clojure. Clojure is so new and still in development that practically all users are "early adopters," and probably almost all of them are the members of the Clojure mailing list. That list has something like 3500 members. Some members of that list probably do not use Clojure, they just want to be informed what happens - or they gave up early, and didn't unsubscribed themselves. So, there could be 2-3000 programmers in Clojure. Also, it is reasonable to assume that CL is *roughly* as popular as Clojure, that Scheme is half as popular, and that other dialects are much less popular, but that there is significant overlap between these groups.
From: Nicolas Neuss on 16 Mar 2010 05:53 Kazimir Majorinc <email(a)false.false> writes: > Also, it is reasonable to assume that CL is *roughly* > as popular as Clojure, that Scheme is half as popular, > and that other dialects are much less popular, but > that there is significant overlap between these groups. Alternatively, it might be reasonable to assume that Scheme is *roughly* twice as popular than CL, CL twice as popular than Clojure, and Clojure twice as popular than Scheme. Nicolas
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F6rn?= Lindberg on 16 Mar 2010 06:12 Kazimir Majorinc <email(a)false.false> writes: > How many people use Lisp (all dialects > combined) today? My guess: 3000, based > on the membership on various Lisp forums. > Anyone with better guess? Here is my guess: most people using Lisp do not participate in these fora. Why do I think so? Because most people using Lisp I have met do not participate in Lisp Internet fora, and have other colleagues using Lisp who do not participate in these fora either. It is an easily made mistake to sit in the light of one's screen and believe that to be the whole world. Bj�rn Lindberg
From: joswig on 16 Mar 2010 07:24
On 16 Mrz., 10:20, Kazimir Majorinc <em...(a)false.false> wrote: > On 15.3.2010 11:26, Pascal Costanza wrote: > > > The people who use such forums probably represent only a minor fraction > > of the number of actual Lisp users. > > It might be true - with one important exception: > Clojure. Clojure is so new and still in development > that practically all users are "early adopters," > and probably almost all of them are the members of the > Clojure mailing list. That list has something like > 3500 members. Some members of that list probably do > not use Clojure, they just want to be informed what > happens - or they gave up early, and didn't unsubscribed > themselves. So, there could be 2-3000 programmers > in Clojure. > > Also, it is reasonable to assume that CL is *roughly* > as popular as Clojure, that Scheme is half as popular, > and that other dialects are much less popular, but > that there is significant overlap between these groups. This is all very vague. You have not defined what 'use', 'popular' or 'Lisp dialect' means. To assume 'that CL is *roughly* as popular as Clojure' is either reasonable (because an unqualified 'popular' can mean anything) or unreasonable since CL and Clojure are so different. Clojure is new, has one (main) implementation and recently got some attention in current programmer circles. It is in early adopter phase and users have fun working with a new language and contribute. There are already users who might not be active on the forum, but working with applications. CL is old (1984), has around ten maintained implementations (some commercial) and another 5 to ten implementations that are still used by some (like GCL, LCL, Open Genera, Lisp to C, ...) and has a bunch of application areas that are very specialized of which most people have never heard of anything. For example there is the 17th ACT-R workshop April 12-17 in Groningen. If you look at the ACT-R site, you'll find that a lot of people are using it: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/people/ Ever heard of ACT-R? I can't recall seeing anyone of its users on comp.lang.lisp in the last year. If you look at their publication list http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/publications/index.php you can see that these people seem to be quite active. I would say that there is a significant user base of CL hidden. Hidden in some specialized groups, in forum-read-only mode or in countries like Japan, where for example Franz reports that they have users and from where 'we' hear (with few exceptions) mostly nothing (besides from some Franz workshop in Japan). I'm not saying that the CL user base is huge (compared to some other popular languages), but it is definitely not 3000. More like ten to fifty times larger than that. But how large is the Scheme user base? I would find that difficult to say. What about its educational use? What about Logo? Logo is a Lisp dialect, too. It has about 200 implementations since 1967. Check out the tree of Logo implementations in this paper: http://elica.net/download/papers/LogoTreeProject.pdf How many Logo users are there? I have no idea. From the past: during the 80s there were almost ten thousand Lisp Machines computers sold (incl. boards for embedded use). It was jokingly said, that this was more than there were competent programmers for them. Which is possibly okay, since some were used for running applications and not for development. But the market was saturated and then it faded away. |