My collection. If I live long enough I intend to read them all.
I recently saw this video that shows lisp as a popular language in the early days.
I thought it was always more of an underground language, crazy to think!
Though I’m no mathematician, Lambda Calculus, which they say must be understood to harness the true power of LISP, strikes me as resembling the articulation of symbolic computation in Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science which he mentions Mathematica’s internal language closely mirrors. LISP’s core of lists also reminds me of Swift’s foundational reliance upon its Tuple type, as well as flat/non-relational databases such as Berkeley DB. Esoteric research on The Golden Ratio’s powers’ comprising integers seem to my mind to lend itself to the notion that it’s possible to trace space-time to a coherent universal thread and compute arbitrary, potentially-relevant portions of it. I know nothing of compilers in any detail ATM, but can see how LISP’s ability to modify its own compiler, particularly at runtime, would lend itself to its original purpose of developing AI. Without aid of formatting to clarify hierarchy of parentheticals, I doubt I could make much progress with it, myself, but color me curious.
All Lisp editors handle the parens automagically. You never have to think about them. Experienced lisp programmers barely see them - the indentation is sufficient.
Lisp’s simple syntax is one of its charms, and that’s what the parens allow.