BOOK · [3718]

LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual

John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards

Technology

On Patrick Collison's bookshelf at patrickcollison.com/bookshelf, LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual by John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards appears in his catalog of physical books across science, history, engineering, and the humanities.

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Patrick Collison

Patrick Collison's Bookshelf
Ken Thompson

tuhs.org

“Well, LISP, least the original LISP, you know, the book, 1.5 is... you know I think it's a horrible language. I really do. But, I was struck with that book and the idea of defining very, very low level semantics, you know cons and... That was the cleanest, simplest, most recursive, beautiful semantics of a language I've ever seen. Probably even to this day. But, unfortunately, what it describes I think is just a horrible language.”

Said in his UNIX Oral History interview conducted by Michael S. Mahoney (MSM) on September 6, 1989, at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Thompson praises the LISP 1.5 manual's semantic elegance while criticizing LISP itself as a language.