
History of Lisp (1979) [pdf] - alokrai
http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf
======
eql5
BTW, if you want to learn/experiment with Common Lisp on mobile, there's a new
horse in town ("new" at least for iOS):

[http://cl-repl.org](http://cl-repl.org)

(Sorry for the shameless plug, wouldn't have mentioned it if it weren't both
free and open source).

~~~
lisper
Looks very cool, but where is the source?

~~~
eql5
Voila! (it's under 'examples/REPL'):
[https://gitlab.com/eql](https://gitlab.com/eql)

------
leoc
Reposting my earlier comment
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10502434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10502434)
:

> Herbert Stoyan's historical work on early Lisp
> [http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2010/07/29/185/](http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2010/07/29/185/)
> [https://web.archive.org/web/20050617031004/http://www8.infor...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050617031004/http://www8.infor..).
> is probably worth reading if one is seriously interested. (I haven't read
> much of it myself yet.) McCarthy praised Stoyan's work as better than his
> own 1979 HOPL paper ( [http://www-
> formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html](http://www-
> formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html) ): "Stoyan's reading of the
> early LISP documents gives a more accurate picture than my own memories
> turned out to have given." [http://www-
> formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/](http://www-
> formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/)

> (As a side-note, I'm pretty sure that the broken, Wayback-beating link to
> "Lisp references according to Miller" on McCarthy's page is to this
> [http://www.ai.sri.com/~delacaze/alu-site/alu/table/Lisp-
> Hist...](http://www.ai.sri.com/~delacaze/alu-site/alu/table/Lisp-Hist..).
> document by Kent Pitman and Brad Miller (see
> [http://www.ai.sri.com/~delacaze/alu-
> site/alu/table/history.h...](http://www.ai.sri.com/~delacaze/alu-
> site/alu/table/history.h..). ).)

------
mtreis86
I would really like to see an updated history that takes up where this left
off. Highlights of the past 40 years: the formation of the Common Lisp
specification, the role of Lisps in AI, Symbolics vs Lisp Machines Inc, their
eventual demise in the AI winter, continued use in DSLs like Autocad and
Emacs, and the small but growing resurgence in interest.

~~~
Rochus
Some of it is described here:
[https://ai.stanford.edu/~nilsson/QAI/qai.pdf](https://ai.stanford.edu/~nilsson/QAI/qai.pdf)
(THE QUEST FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - A HISTORY OF IDEAS AND ACHIEVEMENTS)

~~~
pinewurst
This is a really good book - I bought the Print version a few years ago.

------
freefriedrice
I remember being exposed to LISP in the late 80's after coming from Pascal and
COBOL in my CS101 (C was a 200-level class.) It was such a complete mindf*ck.
After learning procedural language patterns, switching to LISP uprooted
everything, and in some cases the patterns were already burned in. In
hindsight, I think it makes more sense to learn LISP first, and THEN
procedural languages since the latter is a subset of LISP. When C++ appeared,
my first thought was, "Hey, someone made C kinda act like LISP/CLOS."

------
dang
See also

2013
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825698)

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846522)

Others?

