> Basically what I'm saying is, if functional programming is so great, why did LISP et al not take over the world? (Not a LISP hater, just curious).
Because the two aren't the same. Sure, some of the functional programming techniques were invented or had one of their first implementations in early Lisps. But Lisp family isn't built around functional programming per se (particularly with two of the most popular Lisps today, Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp, being multiparadigm languages, with the former having an OOP model that puts everything else to shame). Lisp did take off, but then died in the early 90s because of AI winter, and in the meantime C took off. Lisp never recovered, but it lives on in a way, having invented and refined half of the techniques we use in programming languages today.
(That's not to say Lisp is dead dead. Plenty of active development is going on. Scheme subfamily is alive and kicking, lots of code is being written in Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp too, and it shows up in many unexpected places. Hell, probably everyone at some point writes their half-baked, bug-ridden reimplementation of Lisp when they end up writing evaluators for XML or JSON.)
Because the two aren't the same. Sure, some of the functional programming techniques were invented or had one of their first implementations in early Lisps. But Lisp family isn't built around functional programming per se (particularly with two of the most popular Lisps today, Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp, being multiparadigm languages, with the former having an OOP model that puts everything else to shame). Lisp did take off, but then died in the early 90s because of AI winter, and in the meantime C took off. Lisp never recovered, but it lives on in a way, having invented and refined half of the techniques we use in programming languages today.
(That's not to say Lisp is dead dead. Plenty of active development is going on. Scheme subfamily is alive and kicking, lots of code is being written in Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp too, and it shows up in many unexpected places. Hell, probably everyone at some point writes their half-baked, bug-ridden reimplementation of Lisp when they end up writing evaluators for XML or JSON.)