#+TITLE: About Common Lisp

#+BEGIN_QUOTE
"Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material."

Alan Kay
#+END_QUOTE

* Introduction

Common Lisp inherits and continues Lisp traditions that go back to the
origins of Lisp in 1958. A brief timeline of the emergence of Common
Lisp:

- 1981 Formation of the Common Lisp Group
- 1984 Publication of _Common Lisp the Language_ first edition (CLtL1)
- 1986 Formation of X3J13 Committee
- 1990 Publication of _Common Lisp the Language_ second edition (CLtL2)
- 1992 Publication of _Draft proposed American National Standard Common Lisp_ (dpANS)
- 1994 Approval of dpANSCL
- 1995 Publication of ANSI/X3.226 ANSI Common Lisp specification
- 1995 Publication on World Wide Web of CLtL2
- 1996 Publication on World Wide Web of _Common Lisp Hyperspec_

Over the intervening decades an astonishing amount of Common Lisp and
general Lisp advocacy and criticism has been produced. With due
respect, and having assumed the good intentions of those who have
written it, we, the maintainers of the Common Lisp Exercism track,
nonetheless feel programmers new to Common Lisp should treat all such
writings with extreme skepticism when they come across them. Likewise,
we feel uncomfortable adding to any of it here.

We will provide links to informational resources instead.

* Links

** Reference

- X3J13; Common Lisp Hyperspec: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm

** History

- X3J13; _Common Lisp Hyperspec 1.1.2 History_; http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm
- McCarthy, John; _History of Lisp_; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html
- Gabriel and Steele; _The Evolution of Lisp_; http://dreamsongs.com/Files/Hopl2.pdf
- Pitman, Kent; _Common Lisp: the Untold Story_: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html
- Pitman, Kent; _Kent Pitman's CL References_; http://www.nhplace.com/kent/CL/index.html

** Selected Advocacy

- Garret, Ron;
  - _Why Lisp_; http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/05/why-lisp.html
  - _Lisping at JPL_; http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
- Pitman and Slashdot;
  - _Kent M. Pitman Answers On Lisp And Much More_; http://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/11/03/1726251/kent-m-pitman-answers-on-lisp-and-much-more
  - _Kent M. Pitman's Second Wind_;  http://slashdot.org/story/01/11/13/0420226/Kent-M-Pitmans-Second-Wind
- Siebel, Peter; _Why Lisp?_; http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.html introduction to Practical Common Lisp
- Norvig, Peter; _Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Preface_; http://www.norvig.com/paip-preface.html
- CLISP; _CLISP Common Lisp Praise_; http://clisp.org/propaganda.html
- Lispworks; _Common Lisp - Myths and Legends_; http://www.lispworks.com/products/myths_and_legends.html
- McCarthy, John; _Lisp-Notes on its Past and Future_; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/lisp20th/lisp20th.html

* References

- X3J13; _Common Lisp Hyperspec 1.1.2 History_; http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/01_ab.htm
- McCarthy, John; _History of Lisp_; http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html
- Gabriel and Steele; _The Evolution of Lisp_; http://dreamsongs.com/Files/Hopl2.pdf
- Pitman, Kent; _Common Lisp: the Untold Story_: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html
- Wikipedia; _Common Lisp_; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp