LISP-NOTES ON ITS PAST AND FUTURE-1980

John McCarthy
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
jmc@cs.stanford.edu
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/

Abstract:

LISP has survived for 21 years because it is
an approximate local optimum in the space of programming
languages. However, it has accumulated some barnacles
that should be scraped off, and some long-standing
opportunities for improvement have been neglected.
It would benefit from some co-operative maintenance
especially in creating and maintaining program libraries.
Computer checked proofs of program correctness are now
possible for pure LISP and some extensions, but more theory
and some smoothing of the language itself are required before
we can take full advantage of LISP’s mathematical basis.

1999 note: This article was included in the 1980 Lisp conference held
at Stanford. Since it almost entirely corresponds to my present
opinions, I should have asked to have it reprinted in the 1998 Lisp
users conference proceedings at which I gave a talk with the same
title.