------------------ Lisp Users Questionnaire ------------------ 
  
- First name: 
  
Arthur 
  
  
- Last name: 
  
Lemmens 
  
- Email address: 
  
alemmens@xs4all.nl 
  
- Postal code: 
  
1091 PG 
  
- City: 
  
Amsterdam 
  
- Country: 
  
The Netherlands 
  
- Organization(s) you work for or study at 
  (please supply the name and city for each organization): 
  
Kikashi Software, Amsterdam (my own 1-man company) 
  
- Fields of interest 
  (e.g. computer linguistics, numerical analysis, business software, 
  medicine, bioinformatics): 
  
I'm interested in almost everything, but most of my work has been in 
the following fields: 
  - educational software (especially for language learning, but also 
   in technical fields) 
  - simulations (the last two years I've spent about 40 percent of my 
   time writing software for modelling tree growth, together with a 
   biology researcher) 
  - databases (including web-interfaces) for small and medium-sized 
   organizations 
  
  
- Have you written any Lisp-related papers? If so, please supply 
  bibliographical references (and URL's, if possible). 
  
No. 
  
- Have you developed or participated in the development of any 
  Lisp-related programs or libraries? If so, please supply a URL, 
  if possible. 
  
Nothing that's publicly available. 
  
- Lisp variants you have used 
  (e.g. Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Dylan): 
  
Scheme (I stopped using Scheme about 7 years ago), 
Common Lisp (the last 7 years) 
  
- Lisp variants you're currently using or intend to use in the 
  near future: 
  
Common Lisp 
  
- Lisp implementations you have used 
  (e.g. CMUCL, Lispworks, Allegro Common Lisp, DrScheme): 
  
BBC Lisp (about 20 years ago) 
Scheme interpreters I wrote myself (15-8 years ago) 
Lispworks for Windows Professional (the last 7 years) 
  
- Lisp implementations you're currently using or intend to use 
 in the near future: 
  
Lispworks for Windows Professional 
  
  
- Computer platforms on which you're using or deploying Lisp: 
  
Microsoft Windows 
  
- Number of years of experience with Lisp: 
  
20 (the last 7 years almost full-time) 
  
- Do you use Lisp: 
- at work (if so, how much) 
  
Yes, almost full-time 
  
- Are you using Lisp as much as you would like to? 
  
Yes. 
  
- Do you see any obstacles to further Lisp growth (if so, what 
  is the biggest obstacle in your opinion)? 
  
Inertia of big organizations. 
General lack of knowledge of the current state of Lisp. 
Lack of organization of the Lisp user community. 
Depressed attitude of some old-time Lispers. 
  
I don't think that any of these are fatal, though. I see lots 
of very enthusiastic youngsters on the Internet who are willing 
(and able) to invest lots of time in the best programming language 
ever. I expect an enormous growth of Lisp interest in the next 10 
years. Lisp has survived a severe mid-life crisis and will come 
out of it stronger than ever. 
  
- Would you be interested in a Lisp-related job or contract work? 
  
Contract work, yes. Job, only a very interesting one. 
  
- Is your organization interested in hiring Lisp programmers? 
  
Not at the moment, but maybe later. 
  
- Are you currently participating in Lisp-related meetings? 
  
Yes: meetings of Benelux Lispers in Antwerpen (Belgium) and 
Amsterdam (Netherlands), meetings in Cologne (Germany), will 
go to Hamburg (Germany) meeting in two weeks, have been to the 
Oslo (Norway) workshop. 
  
- Do you know any other Lispers who might be willing to fill in 
  this questionnaire (please supply their email-address if you 
  do)? 
  
Yes, and I'll send them this questionnaire pretty soon.