TITLE: Have Clojure and Racket Overcome the Lisp Curse?
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 01, 2023  2:26 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 I finally read Rudolf Winestock's 2011 essay
<a href="http://winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html">
   The Lisp Curse</a>,
 which is summarized in one line:

 <blockquote><em>
 Lisp is so powerful that problems which are technical issues
 in other programming languages are social issues in Lisp.
 </em></blockquote>

 It seems to me that Racket and Clojure have overcome the curse.
 Racket was built by a small team that grew up in academia.
 Clojure was designed and created by an individual.  Yet they
 are both 100% solutions, not the sort of one-off 80% personal
 solutions that tend to plague the Lisp world.

 But the creators went further: They also attracted and built
 <b>communities</b>.

 The Racket and Clojure communities consist of programmers who
 care about the entire ecosystem.  The Racket community welcomes
 and helps newcomers.  I don't move in Clojure circles, but I
 see and hear good things from people who do.

 Clojure has made a bigger impact commercially, of course.
 Offering a high level of performance and running on the JVM
 have their advantages.  I doubt either will ever displace Java
 or the other commercial behemoths, but they appear to have
 staying power.  They earned that status by solving both
 technical issues and social issues.
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