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Posted by cdegroot 9 hours ago

Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp(berksoft.ca)
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)).

My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my current projects, Common Lisp is a better fit, so I call myself "a Lisp-er" these days. If people like what I did, I do have plans to write some more (but probably only after I retire, writing next to a full-time job is heard). Maybe on Smalltalk, maybe on computer networks - two topics close to my heart.

And a shout-out to Dick Gabriel, he contributed some great personal memories about the man who started it all, John McCarthy.

132 points | 31 commentspage 2
bitwize 3 hours ago|
It's Cees de Groot! Or "Carpe Grootem" as my brain has called him for years. I remember his contributions to the Squeak community from back in the day.
HackerThemAll 3 hours ago|
"arguably the most powerful programming language in the history of computing"

That can be said about quite a few languages, Forth included. The most powerful != easy to use and/or comprehend.

cdegroot 1 hour ago|
That's why I said "arguably", of course.

But, to be honest: Forth is great, but... well... there's no "easy mode" Forth. Whereas there is "easy mode" Scheme - even SICP starts with a very simple and gentle up ramp - so I'd argue to give the honours to Lisp (I'm putting Smalltalk in second place). But that's my personal opinion, I get to put it on my book cover, that's all :-)