Surprised being a LISPer you haven&#x27;t read Gabriel&#x27;s Worse is Better essays on the topic. Convincingly argue the reason behind the uptake of certain tech is they do just enough of a good job to work and for a lot of people. Then they get extended gradually in direction of what they should&#x27;ve been. C and UNIX were perfect examples of this on crappy hardware of 70&#x27;s-80&#x27;s. By 90&#x27;s, it was legacy effect in play for various reasons. Still is.<p>Throw in organizations competing for money or ideology to get a bunch of implementations of a language that was shit to begin with. So, it was more the opposite of what you claim: too many groups trying to make things convenient for themselves in the short-run. LISPers did something similar with their individual messes getting merged into Common LISP. Those doing it clean and sensible on the right hardware were always the outliers.