The Failure of Programmable Programming Languages

There is this myth out there that the wave of the future is a programming language that can modify itself. This sounds odd at first, until you realize how cool that would be.  It means you could add any feature to your programming language that you need.  Right there.  Without waiting for the language designer to get around to it.

In theory...

In practice, the main languages people hold up as being capable of doing this--Lisp, Smalltalk, and Forth--seem to have totally failed.  I run both Windows and Linux and I can't think of a single application for either operating system that uses anyone of those three languages.

Let me say that again, so far as I can tell, neither Lisp (in any of its flavors: Common Lisp, Scheme, or Logo), nor Smalltalk, nor Forth are in production in any meaningful way at any level on any personal computer.

I kind of wish it weren't so because I love these languages, in theory, but in practice they always fall down.

That is about as damning as it gets.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.