I suspect the main reason lisp failed is the syntax, because the first thing early computer users would try to do is get the computer to do arithmetic. In C/Fortran/etc. you can write arithmetic expressions that look more-or-less like arithmetic expressions, e.g. (a + b/2) ** 2 / c. In Lisp you can’t.
I suspect the main reason lisp failed is the syntax, because the first thing early computer users would try to do is get the computer to do arithmetic. In C/Fortran/etc. you can write arithmetic expressions that look more-or-less like arithmetic expressions, e.g. (a + b/2) ** 2 / c. In Lisp you can’t.