The Roots of Lisp
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- John McCarthy's 1960 paper demonstrated how a programming language can be built from a few simple operators and function notation.
- Lisp, short for 'List Processing,' uses lists as a core data structure for both code and data.
- McCarthy's discovery is significant as a historical milestone and a model for modern programming trends.
- The C and Lisp models are described as two clean, consistent programming paradigms, with newer languages moving toward the Lisp model.
- Modern languages increasingly adopt Lisp features like runtime typing and garbage collection.
- Lisp's defining quality is its ability to be written in itself, which the article explains by retracing McCarthy's steps with Common Lisp code.