The Genius of Lisp

ANT

4.3 10
$17.99 $29.99You save $12.00
Format
Digital edition
PDFEPUB
Works on phone, tablet and computer Instant access after checkout Personal-use digital license
About this edition

• Instant access to your digital edition.
• Read anytime, anywhere, on your favorite device.
• No shipping — your book is delivered digitally.
• Simple, secure access after purchase.

Published date February 17, 2026
Author Cees de Groot

Instant digital delivery after purchase.

Download link available immediately after checkout.
In stock
Quantity
Secure checkout — encrypted end to end Free exchange or return within 30 days if the product is defective. Digital formats available instantly
Readers also enjoyed

Discover another great read to add to your digital library.

$17.99 $29.99

Description

Journey through the fascinating story of Lisp: How it came about and why it was designed the way it was. Meet the geniuses involved in its creation, including Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, and the father of Lisp and artificial intelligence, John McCarthy. Lisp has informed the design of most programming languages in use today, and to learn how Lisp was constructed is to learn what programming is all about.

Explore the mathematical foundations of the language and dive deeply into its earliest implementation. Discover the characteristics of and differences between modern Lisps, how to retro-compute like it’s the 1970's (and you’re a student at MIT), and why Emacs was forked. Get a solid understanding of how this language

was critical to early artificial intelligence work, from ELIZA (the ChatGPT of its day) to Expert Systems for medical diagnosis. While Lisp is one of the earliest programming languages, it is still in active use today (ever used EMACS?)

Build Lisp yourself, writing its five key functions -- car, cdr, cons, equal, and atom -- and its minimalistic interpreter with a few lines of JavaScript, to see the simplicity and beauty of its construction, and in doing so, discover for yourself the genius of Lisp.

Foreword by Common Lisp creator Richard. P. Gabriel

Specifications

FormatEPUB, PDF
Pages289
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-1069886415

Frequently asked

Do I need an account to download?

No. After purchase, you can access your ebook directly from the order confirmation or download page.

What if a copy arrives damaged?

Contact us and we’ll help you access the file or provide a replacement download if needed.

Reviews

4.3 7
5★84%4★11%3★3%2★1%1★1%
P Penny Jordan Verified
★★★★★The diagrams do the teachingSeeing the concept drawn before the notation appears changed everything for me.
H Hunter Flynn Verified
★★★★★A set text for my classThe problem sets are graded properly and the solutions are complete.
L Lisa Webb Verified
★★★★★
See all reviews

Customers also downloaded