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John McCarthy, Discoverer of Lisp, Has Passed Away
The first of a few submitters, szo sent in an early
report that John McCarthy passed
early yesterday. Paul Graham
(among others) confirmed: the news
was true. And so, shortly after a fellow
founder of countless language descendants, goes the founder of the Lisp
tree at the age of 84.
lisp will reduce your life expectancy.
.. but then I realized I was missing something.)))
The universe must be kept in balance. Ritchie and McCarthy were to offset Gaddafi and Jobs.
Yes, discoverer. Lisp is programming. And programming is math. Math is all around us... in the tree, the rock. Math surrounds us and binds us all together. Does this mean Lisp obeys the programmer? Partially, but the will of the math works through the programmer as well.
So death to software patents.
(how's that for an incomprehensible morning hours post?)
Actually, the natives of Lisp already knew all about it. McCarthy was just the first person to show up with a flag, guns, germs & steel to claim Lisp for his homeland's empire.
So you're quite right... discoverer is a very patriarchal, hegemonic colonialist way of describing McCarthy. /leftist historian mode :P
Discover, v., "To visit while white."
I think you mean creator or inventor. It's not like the Lisp programming language was just sat out in the wilds of Chile under a rock waiting to be found by an archaeologist.
Actually it was found in a cave in the Pyranees. LISP originally stood for Lost In Spanish Passageways. It was used by early cave men for catching fish. They drew it on the walls carefully concealing the syntax in pictures of Auroks and it remained totally undeciphered for approximately 200,000 years. John McCarthy wandered into a cave after having eaten some soup made from a prehistoric fungus that grows in the area. He was found days later practising tai chi in a nearby stream and went on to write the first modern day LISP interpreter.
Well, to be fair he only "Discovered" it, he apparently didn't create it. I wonder who actually created it and then just left it lying around for him to "discover"?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
... they just close their last parenthesis.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I AM posting from some shitty descendant of Windows 3.1, you insensitive clod!
I finally decided to buy an iPad and Steve Jobs dies.
I started a new project using C and Dennis Ritchie kicks the bucket.
Then I started Stanford's AI Course and now John McCarthy is pining for the fjords.
That's it. It's definitive. I'm a God of Death, so I shall use my recently discovered powers for the good of humanity. I'm going out to buy an Oracle DB and learn how to use it. See you on Larry Ellison's funeral next week.
PS: Also, I suspect I'm the God of Rain too, since every time I wash my car it rains the next day.