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3.4 KiB
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23 lines
3.4 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>LISP</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../L.html" title="L"/><link rel="previous" href="Lions-Book.html" title="Lions Book"/><link rel="next" href="list-bomb.html" title="list-bomb"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">LISP</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Lions-Book.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">L</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="list-bomb.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="LISP"/><dt xmlns="" id="LISP"><b>LISP</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [from ‘LISt Processing language’, but mythically from
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‘Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses’] AI's mother
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tongue, a language based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and
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trees as fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data
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and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s, it is
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actually older than any other <a href="../H/HLL.html"><i class="glossterm">HLL</i></a> still in use
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except FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive
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radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in detail
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from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early
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1980s, LISP has since shared the throne with <a href="../C/C.html"><i class="glossterm">C</i></a>. Its
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partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful. See
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<a href="languages-of-choice.html"><i class="glossterm">languages of choice</i></a>.</p><p>All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values;
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this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise to Alan
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Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote) that
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“<span class="quote">LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of
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nothing</span>”.</p><p>One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example
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that most newer languages, such as <a href="../C/COBOL.html"><i class="glossterm">COBOL</i></a> and
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Ada, are full of unnecessary
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<a href="../C/crock.html"><i class="glossterm">crock</i></a>s. When the <a href="../R/Right-Thing.html"><i class="glossterm">Right Thing</i></a>
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has already been done once, there is no justification for
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<a href="../B/bogosity.html"><i class="glossterm">bogosity</i></a> in newer languages.</p><div class="mediaobject"><img src="../graphics/lisp.png"/><div class="caption"><p>We've got your numbers....</p></div></div></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Lions-Book.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../L.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="list-bomb.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Lions Book </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> list-bomb</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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