This may be an odd question, but do they necessarily go together?
Emacs seems like a lot of effort that could have gone into making an operating system, but which was just bottled up in a text editor because it had nowhere else to go. Something like Guix is more in line with what people say about the potential of lisp languages. Why aren't there more programs configurable in lisp dialects, or more pure lisp programs?
Something like Guix is more in line with what people say about the potential of lisp languages.
I don't think Guix is more in line with the potential of Lisp than Emacs. Guix is a great project but it is creating a UNIX environment with Lisp, not a Lisp environment. Emacs with EXWM, Gnus, eww, pdf-tools, etc. on any UNIX clone is far closer to a Lisp environment than Guix with for example a standard Gnome installation, even despite Emacs at the end of the day still being shackled by UNIX.
Why aren't there more programs configurable in lisp dialects, or more pure lisp programs?
I mean there are lots of applications written in or configurable in Lisp, what are you looking for in particular? For example nearly all applications I use are configurable in Lisp, because most of the applications I use are Emacs or extensions there of. The only applications I have downloaded and installed (I use one of these distros which doesn't by default install X11 etc.) which aren't configurable in Lisp are texlive, mplayer, youtube-dl, and development tooling for non-lisps. Texlive could even be replaced with Pollen if I was more adventurous.
Why aren't there more programs configurable in lisp dialects, or more pure lisp programs?
Well Guile was made the preffered extension language of the GNU project, and that seems to have had very little impact. And when I first started learning Guile, I was disappointed in how little that meant- whether through lack of personnel or will, or just an overall preference for not-lisp in the wider developer community, I can't say.
Guix is a great project but it is creating a UNIX environment with Lisp, not a Lisp environment.
This actually isn't true, Guix is a creating system administration tools for a UNIX environment, not the actual environment.
>>4
I'm assuming they mean the Linux distro.