About Lisp

• Lisp was conceived by John McCarthy in 1956 and first implemented in 1958.
• After FORTRAN, it is the second oldest language in present widespread use.
• Common Lisp was a merging of several Lisp dialects in the 1980s.
• It is a functional language. Consequently, function composition and recursion are two very natural (and powerful) problem solving techniques.
• The emphasis is on symbols, not numbers.
• The list is the key data structure.
• Both programs and data are lists.
• It can be easily extended.
• It is interpreted (read-eval-print), although it can be compiled.
• Garbage collection is automatic.