2008/10/20 by Richard P. Gabriel, Guy L. Steele · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Common Lisp #Computer science #Diversity (politics) #Language evolution #Linguistics #Lisp #Narrative #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Natural language processing #Philosophy #Programming language #Sociology #Software Engineering Research
paper · doi:10.1145/1529966.1529967
openalex publication_date 2008/10/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In 1992 when we completed our first draft of the History of Programming Languages II paper, The Evolution of Lisp [1], it included sections on a theory or model of how complex language families like Lisp grew and evolved, and in particular, how and when diversity would bloom and consolidation would prune. The historian who worked with all the HOPL II authors, Michael S. Mahoney, did not believe our theory was substantiated properly, so he recommended removing the material and sticking with the narrative of Lisp's evolution. We stopped working on those sections, but they remained in the original text sources but removed with conditionals.