“Lisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material.”
Alan Kay
Common Lisp inherits and continues Lisp traditions that go back to the origins of Lisp in 1958. A brief timeline of the emergence of Common Lisp:
- 1981 Formation of the Common Lisp Group
- 1984 Publication of Common Lisp the Language first edition (CLtL1)
- 1986 Formation of X3J13 Committee
- 1990 Publication of Common Lisp the Language second edition (CLtL2)
- 1992 Publication of Draft proposed American National Standard Common Lisp (dpANS)
- 1994 Approval of dpANSCL
- 1995 Publication of ANSI/X3.226 ANSI Common Lisp specification
- 1995 Publication on World Wide Web of CLtL2
- 1996 Publication on World Wide Web of Common Lisp Hyperspec
Over the intervening decades an astonishing amount of Common Lisp and general Lisp advocacy and criticism has been produced. With due respect, and having assumed the good intentions of those who have written it, we, the maintainers of the Common Lisp Exercism track, nonetheless feel programmers new to Common Lisp should treat all such writings with extreme skepticism when they come across them. Likewise, we feel uncomfortable adding to any of it here.
We will provide links to informational resources instead.
- X3J13; Common Lisp Hyperspec: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm
- X3J13; Common Lisp Hyperspec 1.1.2 History; http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm
- McCarthy, John; History of Lisp; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html
- Gabriel and Steele; The Evolution of Lisp; http://dreamsongs.com/Files/Hopl2.pdf
- Pitman, Kent; Common Lisp: the Untold Story: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html
- Pitman, Kent; Kent Pitman’s CL References; http://www.nhplace.com/kent/CL/index.html
- Garret, Ron;
- Why Lisp; http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/05/why-lisp.html
- Lisping at JPL; http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
- Pitman and Slashdot;
- Kent M. Pitman Answers On Lisp And Much More; http://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/11/03/1726251/kent-m-pitman-answers-on-lisp-and-much-more
- Kent M. Pitman’s Second Wind; http://slashdot.org/story/01/11/13/0420226/Kent-M-Pitmans-Second-Wind
- Siebel, Peter; Why Lisp?; http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.html introduction to Practical Common Lisp
- Norvig, Peter; Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Preface; http://www.norvig.com/paip-preface.html
- CLISP; CLISP Common Lisp Praise; http://clisp.org/propaganda.html
- Lispworks; Common Lisp - Myths and Legends; http://www.lispworks.com/products/myths_and_legends.html
- McCarthy, John; Lisp-Notes on its Past and Future; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/lisp20th/lisp20th.html
- X3J13; Common Lisp Hyperspec 1.1.2 History; http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm
- McCarthy, John; History of Lisp; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html
- Gabriel and Steele; The Evolution of Lisp; http://dreamsongs.com/Files/Hopl2.pdf
- Pitman, Kent; Common Lisp: the Untold Story: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html
- Wikipedia; Common Lisp; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp