1958
John McCarthy invents Lisp
John McCarthy invented Lisp in 1958 at MITMassachusetts Institute of Technology — a research university central to many computing breakthroughs. — the second-oldest high-level programming language still in use.
What it was for
Lisp introduced garbage collectionAutomatic memory management that frees unused objects — programmers need not track every allocation manually., symbolic expressions, and macros — ideas that influenced PythonA high-level language known for readability — dominant in data science, scripting, and web backends., JavaScript, and Clojure. McCarthy also coined the term 'artificial intelligenceSoftware that performs tasks associated with human intelligence — perception, reasoning, and learning.' and organized the Dartmouth workshop.
People
- John McCarthy — creator
Why it's here
Lisp is the ancestor of functional programmingA style emphasizing functions and immutable data over step-by-step state changes — influences Haskell, Lisp, and modern languages. and AI research languages.
Why it mattered
It treated code as data — enabling macros and metaprogramming decades early.
What it solved
Researchers needed a flexible symbolic language for AI experiments on early computers.
Media
ImageJohn McCarthynull0, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons