Lisp in 100 Seconds 

4 years ago, I was responsible for maintaining a giant project from 1978, written in Lisp. There was a widely used syntax in that project and I didn't know what it did or how it worked. I searched the internet but nobody knew what it did. I just stopped meddling with it and ignored it for a while. Only later I discovered that syntax was possible thanks to a custom macro written in the project itself. The boomers created a domain specific language and didn't document it.

Learning to program a little Lisp (specifically, Racket) was one of the most rewarding things I ever did as a programmer. The syntax and the approach was so different from anything else I'd ever used, but Lisp was so internally consistent, and everything worked together perfectly once you figured it out; Everything is a list, every element of a list can be a list, and everything can be done recursively. It feels like a language from another planet, and getting familiar with it really expanded my mind and my approach to problems in programming. Learning some Lisp is an incredible way to challenge your assumptions and expand your ability to think about problems.

Some corrections and clarifications: 1. Scheme (1975) is older than Common Lisp (1984). Both are derived from but significantly different from John McCarthy's original LISP (1958) which is not used anymore. 2. The various "Lisp" languages are actually as different as C, C++ and C# so I would discourage from speaking as if "Lisp" is one programming language, unless you mean the original LISP. 3. Usually people say "LISP 1.5" when they mean the original one from McCarthy, because that's the last version of the original language that he published. 4. Some of the important innovations were first invented in Scheme, not LISP. That includes lexical scoping, true first-class functions/closures, and "hygienic" macros. 5. Scheme and Common Lisp are standardized, like C, and there are many implementations of them. CLisp is just one Common Lisp implementation, like GCC for C. 6. Scheme was originally a research project, and while newer and more feature-rich standards were published over the years, the standards continue to be very minimal. So you'll usually commit to a specific implementation, like Racket or Guile, if you want to do something serious with it. 7. Both Common Lisp, and serious/modern implementations of Scheme, can be and are used for "real" serious software projects. For example GNU Guix is a complete GNU/Linux distribution with many core components implemented with the Guile implementation of Scheme. 8. Both Common Lisp and Scheme can be compiled rather than interpreted, it's up to the implementation. The Chicken Scheme compiler actually converts Scheme to C before compiling it with a C compiler for instance. 9. Any talk about the Lisp family of languages is incomplete without mentioning Emacs Lisp. ;-) Emacs is essentially an implementation of a custom LISP-derived programming language called Emacs Lisp (most similar to Common Lisp from the bunch) that is special-tailored to the task of implementing a text editor in it.

"circum-size" lmfao

As a Clojure Dev, it warms my heart seeing u cover lisp! Well played sir!

This is honestly the first 100 seconds video where I had to pause a video to understand the content ( so I can put it on my resume ofc )

1:49 The function name caught me off guard. Great content as always !

I just started reading the wizard book (Structure and Interpretation for Computer Programs) and this is the first thing I see. Thanks for the content!

It's wonderful to know that amazing languages were created on the middle of fifties and sixties and they keeps running modern computers and also they are used like mockups for new languagues. I love those short videos, please keep us up-to-date about the things that the universities and institutes don't share with its students. Thanks Fireship!

So happy to see you reviewing one of my favorite programming languages of all time!!

There is a variant of lisp in autocad and I made it draw a vectorized mandlebrot using a marching squares algorithm. Probably the most productive thing I ever did in both Lisp and Autocad XD

Now that Fireship has made a video, my coworker will finally believe me that Lisp is a serious language!🙏

Learning Racket (a LISP type language) in Uni helped me solve harder recursive problems.

LISP was the programming language used for Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot series on PS1 and Jak & Daxter series on PS2

Been craving a LISP video from you. Great and simple breakdown.

Love it :) A language from 1955 but it has so many things in it we are using still today.

Man, thanks a lot, finally I can start doing my lisp hw after delaying it and waiting for your 100seconds lesson.

I wish I could give you more thumbs up. I'm going through the "Land of Lisp" right now.

A quote about Lisp that stuck with me was "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.“ - Larry Wall

Today, I started reading a book called “structure and interpretation of computer programs” that uses Lisp as the chosen programming language and this video came out the same freaking day is this a coincidence? Think not

I like the first definition of s-expressions that I ever read: - An atom is a s-expression. - A function is a s-expression. - The empty list is a s-expression. - A cons is a s-expression if both its car and cdr are s-expressions.

0:55 Racket is the Lisp successor that takes programmable programming language (or in their words: language oriented programming) to its full extent. It’s the best language for writing your own Domain Specific Language (DSL).

I recommend the book "Practical Common Lisp" for those who want an intro into Lisp. It is more... well, practical, than the Lisp books on AI for example.

The concept and ideas are always fascinating in Lisp, except in real world usage. The hardest codebase to maintain. Edit 1 : Look, I’m not a professor neither a Lisp expert, just a typical dev working around various languages so I share my experience with you guys. Feel free to prove me wrong, it’s just my experience. Even improving a C++ codebase is still way better than dig into lisp family source of someone else.

This is useful as a quick first glance so that you can get the gist without having to waste a whole lot of time. One can make mental notes what to learn more about in detail, and one can go in knowing what should be covered. It's like a fast forward to a synopsis of what it offers. Definitely need this for literally every language that has at least some popularity. Another one, and this one isn't popular anymore, but still offers insight what today's systems *ought* to offer, is: Smalltalk ! Not that I'm a fan of the language itself, but there is something inherently special about the notion of truly live coding, instead all the mickey mousing that everyone does now.

1:01 The Lisp alien mascot is named “Svigo” (‘parenthesis’ in Icelandic) and was created and designed by Conrad Barski, author of Land of Lisp and Bitcoin for the Befuddled

The syntax was daunting at first, but after learning to code Fennel (a Lisp that compiles to Lua) to write my Neovim configuration, I can confidently say I won't be choosing anything else

Being from the engineering background, I'm in the process of strengthening my computer science basics and learning SICP, which extensively uses Scheme, a Lisp dialect. Needless to say, It's totally alien when skimming it but turns out it's very easy to grasp and can explain numerous concepts, especially abstraction, in a simple fashion.

Thank you for really doing lisp justice in the video! You clearly understood the core design principles and goals of the language.

Its finally here, I've been waiting for months. Thank you Fireship!

I took a class in college in Lisp way back in 1988. I was lucky the professor let us take our tests open notes. I still barely passed that class! This video gave me bad flashbacks of that class, LOL.

I feel like the interactive development process did not get the attention it would have deserved, being one of lisps most important and distinctive features…

The circum-size function got me scared for a whole second

@1:49 "use the def-fun keyword - which is definitely the way you pronounce it" That killed me.

i just got an assignment to do in Lisp this weekend. good timing.

How about a Teal (for Lua) video next? Love it and it sure deserves to get some more attention. It's similar to Typescript, in that it is a typed version of Lua that can compile to Lua. An underrated extension for an underrated language ...

I was a little wary when I hit this video, but it is a solid introduction to a language with an extremely complex history and lauded for elegance that isn't always obvious, plus the weight of being such an early language the syntax is quirky by today's standards. Lisp is one of those "you should know these concepts down to the core if you want to make a career out of coding" languages. It's like learning to cook eggs perfectly when you want to be a chef: you learn a fundamental ingredient (protein) inside and out, plus you learn the rigor and mindset of _how_ to learn something inside and out. You'll see that ingredient used a thousand ways in a dozen forms, as a major and minor part, but you also can approach anything new with a wider approach of thought and learning. Seldom will you use Lisp directly, but you'll use variants and languages with features pulled from it over and over.

Now that you did Lisp, you should do a tutorial on setting up Emacs as an IDE! Because why not!

One great man once said: "Lisp is the crack of software languages... Once you try it, nothing hits as hard".

Best part of its parsing is that the FE of the LISP compiler can be written in an afternoon. The rest becomes.....interesting 😏

1:54 “circum-size” nice function name!

One of the coolest things about lisp (IMHO) is the ease of integrating a custom command language into a project. No need to write your own command interpreter!

Wow I just encountered lisp for the first time while trying to customize an emacs module that runs gnu-apl today. Cool!

Dude that Lisp logo is so cool, never seen that one before.

Thank you, for exposing us to the wonderful world of programming languages, frameworks, and other computer-related topics. 🙂

you finally made a lisp in 100 seconds video!!!!! Nice Job!!!!!

Watching Lisp 100s, while eating Chips for 100Rs. (What a time to be alive!)

I wanted to watch a video about "how to fix a LISP" but i ended here, so 10/10, dont know how to speak correctly but now i know a little about LISP

Came to Lisp trough SICP, it takes some time getting used to all parentheses but it is a very powerful language even now.

Love the beautiful logo animations at the beginning of every video!

You should make one on clojure as well since it´s a modern Lisp and it deviates a little bit from the rest of the family!

Paul graham would be proud you covered this!

Clojure is my favorite language I ever wrote. Sadly there isn't a lot of learning content out there.

my father used to use this to script AutoCAD. he was very fond of telling me that the acronym should have stood for "logic in superfluous parentheses"

What a terrific channel.

That poem was hella hard bars and nobody's talking about it

Nitpicks: "a dynamic language": true, but keep in mind that Common Lisp is compiled! *We can create standalone binaries* Moreover, the write-compile-test cycle is extremely short, because we can compile our code function by function and have compilation warnings and errors nearly instantly. We also have an interactive debugger which allows us to resume the computation from anywhere in the stack O_o "dynamic typing": true, but as always with CL it's more complicated. By default, good compilers like SBCL inform us of type mismatches. Unlike barebones Python. We can add type annotations, and we can use the new Coalton library to have Haskell-like types on top of CL O_o To get started, you can use good to very good plugins for VSCode, Atom, Sublime, Jupyter notebooks, and more! In addition of Emacs and Vim, of course. I recommend to look at the CL Cookbook. "format t …" here t means standard output. Using nil would create a string. At the end, you say to run the code with "clisp app.lsp" but we installed the SBCL implementation :) So, just use SBCL. CLISP didn't see updates in a long time, it's good only for getting started. (also, file names are .lisp today) --- Something worth mentioning IMO is that CL is still used by many companies, huge or small, for some it's their secret weapon: Quantum Computing companies, Google (for ITA Software)… see awesome-lisp-companies. And it was sent in space for the NASA in the 80s!! (Remote Agent Experiment)

I wish your videos will be exactly 100 seconds one day.

Make a long version Lisp tutorial, that would be awesome (for me as a student).

I program in LISP (programming language) because I have a lisp (speech impediment I speak with on purpose)!!

there is a project called roswell, is a tool to set up your common lisp environment, is like rvm/rbenv/nvm/asdf/ruby-install so you can install and manage the different common lisp implementations like sbcl, clisp, clozure, and use it to have scripts in common lisp. CL code is not traditionally stored in text files, is stored in a memory image of the lisp vm, but with roswell you can make scripts stored as text files and run them in bash, with a code editor and the cl plugins you can code in text files and load the code in the lisp vm. the most usage for common lisp is as object oriented programming language, more so than functional, SBCL optimizes a lot based on the classes of CLOS common lisp object system, is how you get the most performance out of it. And the community is heavily focused on the use of CLOS

Amazing content as always. Can you make a video about Abap(SAP) language too? I started learning it 'cause the company I'm working as intern uses it. It would be nice to hearing it from you :)

Thank you AutoCAD for introducing me into this particular programming language

i came looking for your org-mode in 100 seconds. . . . youtube searches dont show it. did i imagine it already exists? org-mode in 100 seconds would be awesome. love your in 100 seconds vids. good stuff.

Thanks for the quick tutorial. I saw Lisp on every old essay online. I need to learn it now.

This actually looks really good. I won't learn it, but still, I had a thought. If a Lisp dev sees this post, how is/was your expirience with the language?

no, to get started, you install scheme, and get the book "the little schemer". best programming book I've ever read

Please make a "Scala in 100 Seconds"

Any love for Powershell? It's a JIT scripting language that runs on top of the .NET CLR. It uses a unique Verb-Noun naming scheme for functions, and if you make a function with an unapproved verb, it might throw a warning. Variables begin with dollar signs, like in PHP, and being a scripting language you don't need to declare them. Nor do you need to import modules, unless you're digging very deep into .NET. Speaking of which, all of .NET's libraries are available for use. And then there's the optional type system, used by prepending a variable with the [type] in brackets. As a bonus, all objects are .NET Objects, and most code also works as C# code, so if you really like your script it should be pretty easy to compile.

Nice! Hopefully you'll be able to get around to Haxe sometime :D

Topic suggestion: Forth and Ada

loved the "Hola Mamá" string

Chia crytpo currency support for programming using it's blockchain is based on Lisp

Joma started programming with Racket which is a lisp dialect to interplay with modern operating systems.

Fireship managed to make a language from six decades ago look aesthetic

Lisp - Alpha preview version, 1958 Common Lisp - Release Candidate version, 1984 Lisp - version 1.0, code-name CLOJURE, 2007-till today. Programming jobs: highest paying language - Clojure

you explained python, java, c++ in 100 seconds now THIS is going to be a real challenge

That's exactly what I would name a function that returns the radius of a circle.

Not me searching "lisp fireship" a few days ago.

Did he mention that this language kicks butt with numbers and math? If you wanted to know what 100! is (100 factorial) LISP says I can do that. If you want to study repeating decimals when they repeat at huge rates, LISP says I can do that. Look for CLISP online, that's the version I have used. It works. If you can stand all the ()s you'll love it.

Concise and clean

I came to your channel yesterday looking for this video. Thanks!

scheme is older than common lisp. ruby was inspired by emacs lisp javascript was inspired by scheme clojure was indeed mostly influenced by common lisp

I still have nightmares from learning lisp on my CS degree

THANK YOU I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THISSS

The mapchar at 2:12 has apparently inspired map() in Python🔥

the joke where the last couple of gigabytes of a lisp program being used by some corporation getting wiped out not doing any damage because the deleted parts were simply right brackets is funny

You made a good job, THANKS!

Yes mate, some of suggested this years ago. AWK so it’s not awkward

This made me once again mourn the fact that I can't use Clojure in my day job.

Thank's man, you finally did it

In the daily grind its easy to forget that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Thanks! One more programming language to my resume!

Can you cover AceBase? It looks really promising. I think it deserves more attention

FORTRAN: exists and everyone loves it Lisp: "am I a joke to you?"

you forget to mention the legendary sicp book.

Why I have a homework this week about lisp and I never understood where lisp name came from... This unblocked me... now it make sense

I’m glad rust has some powerful macro features like lisp.

programmable programing language, thats exactly what is is ;)

You are the best who explains in 100s, please keep making 100s explain videos