Responses to the Quicklisp CL survey

Surprises, and non-surprises

I'm not surprised Windows is so 'popular': it's what a lot of people use at work. I work, and I use Lisp to be more productive at work, so I use Lisp on Windows, sometimes.

I'm surprised Ruby is so low (lower than Python!), but not that Clojure is. I've already got CL! :-)

I'm not surprised that so many don't interact at all. Lisp is a simple language (so I need almost no tech support), and a powerful one (so I can do things on my own). Plus, there isn't really any good online place for Lisp any more -- comp.lang.lisp was OK but today it's all full of spam, and Google Groups apparently doesn't have a spam filter (or even killfiles), and I'm way too lazy to find an alternative way to browse Usenet. :-)

When I see Lisp questions online, 49% of them are "How do I implement this trivial function in Lisp?" (i.e., homework), 49% of them are "I can't figure out packages/libraries" (gah...), and 2% of them are actually interesting questions. Complex languages like C++ and C# can have rich, vibrant forums with people discussing subtle syntax issues and what's coming in next year's version of the language. We really don't have that to fall back on. :-)