www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/OralHistory/transcripts/thompson.htm ↗

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

“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.”