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> C, Forth, Lisp these were all "first era" languages. Each had a chance to be used, to grow, to spawn other languages.

Do you have any idea of how much is there from Lisp in e.g. Javascript and Python? With the only exception of prefix notation - there is a LOT of things directly inspired by Lisp in many modern languages.

Comfortable to the most number of people? Following the same logic we can conclude that Mandarin is the most comfortable spoken language, because it's the most common language on Earth.

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>> Do you have any idea of how much is there from Lisp in e.g. Javascript and Python?

Absolutely! I'm not saying that Lisp is a bad language. I like Lisp (and Forth). I'm saying that its syntax (and the why of its syntax) are the primary reasons it hasn't caught on. I'm just not buying the "too powerful" and such arguments.

>> ...we can conclude that Mandarin is...

Most people pick their spoken language by their surroundings and what their family speak. Children aren't making a choice. In the early days of computers when the root languages were being created everyone had a choice. Maybe not as much now but still anyone can pick up new languages during their careers.

> it hasn't caught on

That's where you got it all backwards. Lisp (as an idea) after six decades is still thriving. There is a Lisp dialect for almost any platform. Clojure surpassed in popularity languages like F#, OCaml and Haskell, even though they are older than Clojure. There are more Clojure conferences, more meetups, more podcasts and more jobs. There are regular conferences in the US, Canada, Brazil, India and in almost every European country. Some of them have multiple Clojure-focused conferences. Emacs and emacs-lisp is still being developed and used by thousands around the world. Common Lisp is still in use. Racket is pretty popular in academia and beyond.

Again, Lisp is just an idea. If you grok the awesomeness of that idea you may someday find what makes it so powerful. Lispers often talk about "enlightenment" and call Lisp "a secret alien technology". They don't do it simply to justify their choices or to create aura with elitist attitude to scare outsiders.

Akin to the idea of Vim as a modal text editing - it takes time to get it, to learn it, to understand it. But one day you may realize the power behind it. Most people, being spectators don't get it. Sometimes people would learn just the basics of Vim, move onto something else and would be like "meh". But those who stick around, they soon may find an incredible new world that changes their subjective view and understanding of how things work. And they realize that there's nothing that can convince them to "unsee" this new world of possibilities. And just like there are many Lisp dialects, there are many ways to run Vim. You can do it in almost any modern IDE and editor.

Lisp is the same. It is a simple but quite powerful idea, if you don't see its power - perhaps because you haven't really looked.

Unfortunately yes, that's not the best way to "sell it", but that's the truth. You have to be a Vimmer to see the power behind modal editing, you need to become a Lisper to see true power of Lisp. That is why neither Lispers nor Vimmers have any illusions - they know, their way of thinking will never become mainstream.

I'll agree that the ideas and power of Lisps have caught on and are even pervasive. Just that "thinking in Lisp" is what I believe has held it back.

I have fond memories of a number of editors: VIM, EMACS, VEdit, and KEdit (Rexx scripting). When the mouse centric editors appeared on the scenes I found they worked better for me. As someone who has coded in Lisp, Forth, C, etc. and in a wide variety of editors I guess our experiences differ.

> I have fond memories of a number of editors: VIM, EMACS ... When the mouse centric editors appeared on the scenes

End 70s on the Lisp Machine (had a megapixel bitmap screen, mouse and GUI) with the Zmacs editor. The second Emacs ever written and the first one written in Lisp.