Jump to content

Lisp (programming language)

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Revision as of 00:45, 22 August 2008 by 124.187.42.188 (talk)

LISP (or Lisp) is the name for a programming language. It is among the oldest programming languages that are still used today. Only Fortran is older. LISP was designed by John McCarthy in 1958. The two best-known dialects of LISP are Common Lisp and Scheme. Originally, LISP was based on the mathematical concept of lambda calculus (developed by Alonzo Church). It quickly developed into a language used for Artificial intelligence. Many concepts that are used in modern programming languages were pioneered by LISP. This is the case for Object-oriented programming, tree data structures and dynamic typing amongst others.

Linked lists are a very important data structure in LISP. Quite a lot can be done using linked lists. From there LISP has its name. It stands for LISt Processor.

LISP has educational benefits as well as just benefits in general. It's a good program that can help young children develop skills and become efficient within the programming language.