LISP

A family of progaming languages designed by John McCarthy in 1958.

The most obvious difference with other languages is the use of S-expression . All code and data are written as expression.

The Shoulders of Giants or Uncovering the Foundational Ideas of Lisp

  • 1928 - Hilbert’s program, self referential paradox Russell’s paradox. Grand plan to formalize all the mathematics.
    • Show that the system is complete
    • Show that the system is consistent
    • Show that the system is decidable
    • First and Second Incompleteness theorem
    • Church’s Theorem and Turing’s proof

    Hilbert program was dead in the water

Rsza Péter understood that Goedel recursive function were important in their own right. She published a paper for studing recursive function in 1932.

Functions:

  • Zero function
  • Successor function
  • Projection function

Operations:

  • Composition
  • Recursion
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