LISP Superseded
LISP
KindProgramming language
Appeared1958
StatusSuperseded
CreatorJohn McCarthy / MIT
FamilyLisp
Also known asLisp
The second-oldest high-level language still in use — McCarthy's list processor introduced garbage collection, conditionals, recursion, and code-as-data. The original dialect dissolved into the family it founded.
1960198020002020
Created by John McCarthy
Described in Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions
McCarthy's 1958 Lisp — the second-oldest language still used — brought symbolic computation: S-expressions, the conditional expression, recursion, garbage collection, and the read-eval-print loop. Steve Russell's 1959 implementation of eval made theory a program.\n\nEvery Lisp since — Scheme, Common Lisp, Clojure, Emacs Lisp — descends from this single ancestor, and homoiconicity (code as data) remains its signature.
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Timeline
| 1958 | Designed by John McCarthy at MIT |
| 1960 | LISP I ships; garbage collection debuts |