>If it's because of libraries, then the question is: Why do people write libraries for these languages and not the Lisp ones?
Because libraries already exist for those languages, as well as support, vendors, and a big ecosystem, familiar syntax, and jobs. So they write libraries for languages that are already popular.
If you meant, "but why wasn't some Lisp the one that gain popularity back in the day, when C, C++, Python, and Java didn't exist or where still fresh?"
I think because:
1) it was too advanced for the procedural mindset at the time,
2) it was not sufficiently efficient in those primitive 16 bit machines
3) fragmentation
and most importantly, no killer app and major vendor backing or OS first-class support (like C had for UNIX, C++ for Windows, and Java got from SUN).
Because libraries already exist for those languages, as well as support, vendors, and a big ecosystem, familiar syntax, and jobs. So they write libraries for languages that are already popular.
If you meant, "but why wasn't some Lisp the one that gain popularity back in the day, when C, C++, Python, and Java didn't exist or where still fresh?"
I think because:
1) it was too advanced for the procedural mindset at the time,
2) it was not sufficiently efficient in those primitive 16 bit machines
3) fragmentation
and most importantly, no killer app and major vendor backing or OS first-class support (like C had for UNIX, C++ for Windows, and Java got from SUN).