The History of Lisp and Early Artificial Intelligence 

Why the programming languages are still not self-aware in the 21-st century ! That should really trouble you all immensely. Do something about it.

Self-awareness is pretty trivial to achieve. /*this program is self-aware*/void main(void){int c=34;char*s="/*this program is self-aware*/void main(void){int c=34;char*s=%c%s%c;printf(s,c,s,c);}";printf(s,c,s,c);}

@@reasonerenlightened2456 dude what

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 making a statement does not mean understanding the statement.

@@reasonerenlightened2456 What does?

Why is Lisp dead today in regards to Artificial General Intelligence? Why the programming languages are still not self-aware in the 21-st century ! That should really trouble you all immensely.

Unfortunately, AutoLISP/VisualLISP is a dialect with the worst of both worlds: you suffer the odd LISP syntax without getting the benefits of lexical binding and token-based macros. Yes, SBCL is useful. Also Elisp, which is the scripting/automation language built into Emacs. And don’t forget Scheme, which is a major offshoot with its own interesting features, like continuations.

Don't forget that Emacs is in Lisp. Although elisp is only used in Emacs applications, not standalone general programming. Clojure is used a fair amount. Common Lisp is used a lot more than you probably think. Scheme has been used a little bit in the past, not sure how much in the last decade though.

@@cstacy In particular, it's great that Emacs captured the most primitive elements of text editing first and built things off those. When you wrap/abstract the basic (C) elements of what you're trying to do, you can grow something in Lisp without having to keep implementing new C functions all the time. There is a lot of C in Emacs, but the Lisp side builds on itself in a powerful way. You pay in speed for the abstraction but the payoff in flexibility is generally worth it.

My very first programming language was/is Clojure and I'm having a blast learning and playing with it and building little projects. I never could understand the OOP world. The LISP world is absolutely fascinating to me. Would you recommend learning Common Lisp (or any variations of Scheme) for someone who enjoys Clojure ?

@@stevenaguilera9202 I think it would be worth your time but you might want to do it as an academic exercise first. The different dialects almost have a tribal nature to them in the way they approach problem solving. As you move from one tribe to another make sure you spend enough time to really absorb what each one has different from the others and how those pieces work together. But I would caution you not to push through any of them too quickly because it's very easy to learn 10 or 20% of something and then flutter on to the next thing. Scheme will teach you to appreciate recursion and breaking down lists you'll also learn about combinators,closures, and continuations if you go very far. Common Lisp has a lot of unopinionated flexibility in how you solve things and offers a very different object-oriented system if you choose to use it. It's easy to just tell you to try them all, but there is a cost to it. You really have to dig in deep and get the flavor of these things which takes time. However, with a more rounded view of Lisp your biggest problem might be choosing one of the four working solutions that appear in your head. Just pace yourself these languages all look relatively similar and many of them share key elements but they also have little features that are different and worth learning well. And once you get very proficient you might even start writing macros to import things you like from stuff like Common Lisp or Scheme into Clojure. However, make sure you learn macros really well - don't give in to the fear that much of the Clojure community has around them. They're actually vital to keeping a language relevant. For example, the Common Lisp spec hasn't had a release since Clojure was invented and yet it steals Clojure features like arrow macros all the time. (Those in themselves can be an anti pattern if overused however). Anyway, yes, do learn other dialects steal their features if you like and become a better programmer!

What was inaccurate about that part in particular? I ask as someone who wasn't around in the 70s.

Yes! Do tell....

Racket is awesome.

Why the programming languages are still not self-aware in the 21-st century ! That should really trouble you all immensely. Do something about it.

reasonerenlightened2490 hey, what do u mean by self aware?

From a fellow Emacs user: yes you are. 😉

Thanks! I probably wouldn't, there are plenty of lisp tutorials out there who do a much better job at it than I would :)

if you set x=10 then you see that something makes no sense because x is actually equals to 69 because apparently tomatoes are a fruit that you can loop through a loop which loops recursively through a looop.