He's overlooking an incredibly important factor:
Java and C++ had capable, even enterprise quality free compilers at a time when Common Lisp environments were typically either hideously expensive or poorly supported or both.
You could grab Sun's JDK for free, or GCC, or (later) Visual Studio Express at a time when the best options for Common Lisp were thousands of dollars per seat, or barely working on x86 (CMUCL didn't have x86 support in any capacity until after 96, and by then Java was out).
Personally, I loved lisp in the 90s, but it was just so much easier to get my hands on C and Java, and libraries to go with them. Java, C and C++ were actually available on DOS and Windows. Even today, Windows support among lisps is terrible!
Edit: I miss Turbo C, but had there been a Turbo Lisp, priced affordably and on the shelf at radio shack? We'd all be programming in lisp.
Java and C++ had capable, even enterprise quality free compilers at a time when Common Lisp environments were typically either hideously expensive or poorly supported or both.
You could grab Sun's JDK for free, or GCC, or (later) Visual Studio Express at a time when the best options for Common Lisp were thousands of dollars per seat, or barely working on x86 (CMUCL didn't have x86 support in any capacity until after 96, and by then Java was out).
Personally, I loved lisp in the 90s, but it was just so much easier to get my hands on C and Java, and libraries to go with them. Java, C and C++ were actually available on DOS and Windows. Even today, Windows support among lisps is terrible!
Edit: I miss Turbo C, but had there been a Turbo Lisp, priced affordably and on the shelf at radio shack? We'd all be programming in lisp.