We've got your numbers....
[from `LISt Processing language', but mythically from `Lots of
Irritating Superfluous Parentheses'] AI's mother tongue, a language
based on the ideas of (a) variable-length lists and trees as
fundamental data types, and (b) the interpretation of code as data
and vice-versa. Invented by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s,
it is actually older than any other {HLL} still in use except
FORTRAN. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable adaptive
radiation over the years; modern variants are quite different in
detail from the original LISP 1.5. The dominant HLL among hackers
until the early 1980s, LISP has since shared the throne with {C}. Its
partisans claim it is the only language that is truly beautiful. See
{languages of choice}.
All LISP functions and programs are expressions that return values;
this, together with the high memory utilization of LISPs, gave rise
to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote)
that "LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of
nothing".
One significant application for LISP has been as a proof by example
that most newer languages, such as {COBOL} and Ada, are full of
unnecessary {crock}s. When the {Right Thing} has already been done
once, there is no justification for {bogosity} in newer languages.
We've got your numbers....
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {aliasing bug}{Amiga Persecution Complex}{grok}{languages of choice}{macrology}{precedence lossage}{T}{timesharing}]