Dear friends,
I want to ask you a confirmation about an history point concerning the
origins of LISP (the section 2-13 of the FAQ doesn't say something about that).
Some years ago, one of my teacher says during a lesson that when John
McCarthy, around 1956, think to that will become LISP, he only want to write
an extension to the Fortran language (Fortran I or Fortran II at this time)
to manipulate lists structures. It would be only later that he thought to a
real new language, completely independant of Fortran.
Is there somebody who can confirm or infirm this fact, and can give me a
bibliographic reference? (it's for an article about Fortran that I have to
write...)
Thanks for answer.
Best regards,
------------------------------------------------------
Denis Girou (C.N.R.S./C.I.R.C.E.) |
Batiment 506 - B.P. 167 - 91403 Orsay Cedex - France |
E-mail : ·····@circe.fr - Tel. : 33. 1. 69.82.41.52 |
------------------------------------------------------
In article <·······················@circe.fr>, ·····@circe.fr (Denis Girou)
wrote:
> Some years ago, one of my teacher says during a lesson that when John
> McCarthy, around 1956, think to that will become LISP, he only want to write
> an extension to the Fortran language (Fortran I or Fortran II at this time)
> to manipulate lists structures. It would be only later that he thought to a
> real new language, completely independant of Fortran.
>
> Is there somebody who can confirm or infirm this fact, and can give me a
> bibliographic reference? (it's for an article about Fortran that I have to
> write...)
>
The primary need was, I think, for an algebraic list procesing language,
and Fortran was one of the candidates for a start-out platform. Fortran
List Processing Language (FLPL) was developed by other poeple than
McCarthy, who decided to set out for a new language.
A reference:
McCarthy, J.:
History of Lisp. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Vol.13, no.8, August 1978, pp 5-11.
Agnar Aamodt
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agnar Aamodt (Ph.D) | Email: ·····@ifi.unit.no
Department of Informatics | Fax: +47-7-591733
College of Arts and Sciences |
University of Trondheim | Phone: (office): +47-7-591838
N-7055 Dragvoll | Phone: (secr.): +47-7-591840
NORWAY | Phone: (home): +47-7-977365
---------------------------------------------------------------------------