The name is an Acronym for List Processor.

It is the canonical FunctionalProgrammingLanguage?. EdsgerWybeDijkstra approves of it.

The secret to reading LISP is to look at the indenting. You will go mad if you count the brackets.

The secret to writing LISP is to always use an editor such as Emacs that autoindents LISP code and highlights matching brackets for you.

The name LISP has really come to denote a family of ProgrammingLanguages in practice:

CommonLisp

Standardised, heavy-duty Lisp - "the most thorough programming language in the universe".

Scheme

Elegant intellectual Lisp. Coding acrobats do their backflips here.

Elisp

The scripting language controls every aspect of Emacs.

Interesting Links

• QuickLispTutorial
• Online LISP tutorial
• Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine (Part I), the original paper discussing LISP.

CategoryProgrammingLanguages, CategoryFunctionalProgrammingLanguages