History of Lisp (1979) [pdf]

This is McCarthy's paper on Lisp for HOPL (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Programming_Languag... in 1978. McCarthy praised Herbert Stoyan's historical work on early Lisp http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2010/07/29/185/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050617031004/http://www8.infor... above his own "History of Lisp": "Stoyan's reading of the early LISP documents gives a more accurate picture than my own memories turned out to have given." http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/ For HOPL 2…

Reposting my earlier comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10502434 : > Herbert Stoyan's historical work on early Lisp http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2010/07/29/185/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050617031004/http://www8.infor.... is probably worth reading if one is seriously interested. (I haven't read much of it myself yet.) McCarthy praised Stoyan's work as better than his own 1979 HOPL paper ( http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html ): "Stoyan's reading of the early LISP…

"The Evolution of Lisp" by Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel is also a good related paper: https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf