> What is the take-away message for that person? How can it possibly be anything other than: "Lisp is fragmented! […]”
When I last worked in Lisp (in the 90s), "Lisp" wasn't just fragmented. The word described a family of languages, that weren't even unified around LISP1 versus LISP2, let alone Flavors vs CLOS, etc. If you wanted to be clear about which one you meant, you'd say MacLISP, or InterLISP, or Common Lisp, or Emacs Lisp, or something.
Hence my question in a sibling comment: does Lisp now mean, in general or in your community, Common Lisp?
Look, you need a CS degree or two to even understand what "family of languages means", first of all. It's not helpful when facing toward non-users of Lisp, who are relatively new programmers.
Less "family" nonsense, and more solid definitions. Problem with family is that drunken Uncle Al who comes over and sleeps on your sofa for three weeks is also "family". Al doesn't even understand that empty list is false, like everyone in this household was raised to; kick the lamer out!
But if Lisp means only "Common Lisp", that is very unhelpful and stifling.
That would be like "C" only meaning "ISO C 2011", excluding concepts such as "GNU C" or "Microsoft Visual C", or "C90" (a superseded ISO language, no longer C now).
There has to be some flexibility: a sweet spot between useless rigidity and scatter-brained dilution of meaning.
When I last worked in Lisp (in the 90s), "Lisp" wasn't just fragmented. The word described a family of languages, that weren't even unified around LISP1 versus LISP2, let alone Flavors vs CLOS, etc. If you wanted to be clear about which one you meant, you'd say MacLISP, or InterLISP, or Common Lisp, or Emacs Lisp, or something.
Hence my question in a sibling comment: does Lisp now mean, in general or in your community, Common Lisp?