2 ms·

I think that essay a bit unfortunate worded: 'The Lisp in his 1960 paper was meant to be a formal model of computation, like a Turing Machine' That's more abo

by lispm 7y ago

I think that essay a bit unfortunate worded: 'The Lisp in his 1960 paper was meant to be a formal model of computation, like a Turing Machine' That's more about a paper from 1960 where McCarthy presented Lisp to a certain audience of mathematicians. The actual Lisp programming system which existed at that time (and had a manual) was designed and developed from 1958 onwards. Again: 'The Lisp in his 1960 paper was meant to be a formal model of computation, like a Turing Machine' But the Lisp programming system they developed since 1958 was actually an implementation of Lisp on an IBM 704. The language, its programming model and its implementation were developed since 1958 -> together. It was an iterative process over several years: ideas were formulated, code was written (often on paper) and then tested practically on a computer. Step by step. More detail on the early years is by Prof. Herbert Stoyan: https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love/blob/master/comp_sci_fundamentals_and_history/early-lisp-history-1956-1959-herbert-stoyan-html-rendering.pdf https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love/blob/master...

alidcastano 7y ago
Given your responses I wouldn't say its misworded but wrong. Specifically referring to his last sentence: "McCarthy didn't realize it could be used on computers till his graduate student Steve Russell suggested it." Anyway, appreciate the clarification/link. Will try to correct my article when I get a chance.
- lispm 7y ago
  That sentence refers to the interpreter as an evaluator for Lisp, where McCarthy had the idea and Steve Russell suggested that it could be implemented - and then also did it. Before, code was manually translated to an actual implementation on the machine. It seems also that it took time to get details and the semantics right - especially the problem of of lexical binding (the FUNARG problem) took more than a decade to fix.

by lispm 7y ago

alidcastano 7y ago

Given your responses I wouldn't say its misworded but wrong. Specifically referring to his last sentence: "McCarthy didn't realize it could be used on computers till his graduate student Steve Russell suggested it." Anyway, appreciate the clarification/link. Will try to correct my article when I get a chance.

lispm 7y ago
That sentence refers to the interpreter as an evaluator for Lisp, where McCarthy had the idea and Steve Russell suggested that it could be implemented - and then also did it. Before, code was manually translated to an actual implementation on the machine. It seems also that it took time to get details and the semantics right - especially the problem of of lexical binding (the FUNARG problem) took more than a decade to fix.