Paul Graham personal blog
The Roots of Lisp
(I wrote this article to help myself understand exactly what McCarthy discovered. You don't need to know this stuff to program in Lisp, but it should be helpful to anyone who wants to understand the essence of Lisp � both in the sense of its origins and its semantic core. The fact that it has such a core is one of…
- Points
- 296
- HN comments
- 146
- Submissions
- 2
- Cited by
- 31 commenters
Programming LanguagesHistory & Retro Computing2011
On Hacker News
| Submitted | Title on HN | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 24, 2011 | The Roots of Lisp by DanielRibeiro | 296 | 56 |
| Jan 16, 2020 | The Roots of Lisp (2001) by afurrysolver | 124 | 90 |
Cited in comments
Linked from 39 Hacker News comments by 31 different people, from Aug 2008 to Aug 2026.
Most recent:
- peter_d_sherman · Aug 24, 2026
- aportnoy · Feb 23, 2026
- baq · Sep 3, 2025
- so-cal-schemer · Jul 29, 2025
- anthk · Jan 23, 2025
- phoe-krk · Jun 23, 2024
