Class 32: Why LISP?

Back to Debrief on Midsemester Examination. On to The Design of LISP.

This outline is also available in PDF.

Held: Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Summary: Today we consider reasons that people love (and hate) Lisp.

Related Pages:

EBoard.
Reading: McCarthy, J. (1978). History of LISP. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 13(8), pp. 217-223. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/960118.808387.

Notes:

Reading for Friday: McCarthy, John. (1960). Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I. Communications of the ACM 3(4), pp. 184-195. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/367177.367199.
Due to prereg and College committee work, I need folks to sign up for appointments. Times at http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/Schedule/signup.2011S.txt. Signup via email.
EC for Ginsburg convo, Thursday.
EC for open discussion with Jane Ginsburg, Thursday, 9:00-10:30 in Mears Cottage.
EC for open discussion with Jane Ginsburg, Thursday, 2:30-4:00 in Mears Cottage.
No CS Extras this week. (What do you think of the prospective title of Bites and Bits?)
EC for Friday's CS Table.

Overview:

Why LISP?
Why not LISP?
Graham's differences: Then and Now
Other issues.

Why Lisp?

Sam's claim: People who program in LISP are wild fanatics
- Well, at least wild fanatics about the language.
What makes people fanatic about LISP (and Scheme)?
- Question to be answered by students and Sam in class.

Why Not Lisp?

Sam's other claim: People who don't program in LISP are often significantly dismissive of LISP.
What are the weaknesses of LISP that might offset some of those strengths?
- Question to be answered by students and Sam in class.

What Made Lisp Different?

Graham claims that LISP was significantly different than other languages of the time.
- What do you see as important differences?

What Makes LISP Different?

Graham claims that LISP remains significnalty different than most other languages (other than LISP variants).
- What do you see as important differences?

Back to Debrief on Midsemester Examination. On to The Design of LISP.

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Samuel A. Rebelsky, rebelsky@grinnell.edu