Ask HN: Lisp for web apps

2 points

11 years ago

In his essays, Paul Graham goes to great lengths to attribute much of his success in developing one of the first web apps to him deciding to use Lisp. He claims that it was a competitive advantage that none of his competitors were using Lisp and therefore he was able to develop features at a faster pace.

> Robert Morris says that I didn't need to be secretive, because even if our competitors had known we were using Lisp, they wouldn't have understood why: "If they were that smart they'd already be programming in Lisp." [0]

In other essays, he goes on to describe what makes Lisp different [1] but its all fairly technical (example: Programs composed of expressions. Lisp programs are trees of expressions, each of which returns a value.) I've heard professors also wear their Lisp background as a badge of honor.

What's the practical implication of Lisp's unique features, specifically in developing web applications? Is Lisp still being used in web apps?

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html