Name: Anonymous 2012-05-16 2:37
“The greatest single programming language ever designed.” —Alan Kay, on Lisp
“Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.” — Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"
“One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented.” — Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
“Within a couple weeks of learning Lisp I found programming in any other language unbearably constraining.” — Paul Graham, Road to Lisp
“Lisp is the most sophisticated programming language I know. It is literally decades ahead of the competition ... it is not possible (as far as I know) to actually use Lisp seriously before reaching the point of no return.” — Christian Lynbech, Road to Lisp
“Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.” — Philip Greenspun
“We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy?” — Guy Steele, Java spec co-author, LL1 mailing list, 2003
“Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.” — Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10
“Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp.” — Paul Graham
“Lisp ... made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics.” — L. Peter Deutsch
“Lisp is a programmable programming language.” — John Foderaro, CACM, September 1991
“Will write code that writes code that writes code that writes code for money.” — on comp.lang.lisp
“I object to doing things that computers can do.” — Olin Shivers
“Lisp is a language for doing what you've been told is impossible.” — Kent Pitman
“Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.” — Marvin Minsky
“Programming in Lisp is like playing with the primordial forces of the universe. It feels like lightning between your fingertips. No other language even feels close.” — Glenn Ehrlich, Road to Lisp
“Lisp is the red pill.” — John Fraser, on comp.lang.lisp
“The language God would have used to implement the Universe.” — Svein Ove Aas, Road to Lisp
"If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror." — Erik Naggum
"Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages." — Eric S. Raymond
"You can use C++ if you want with GNOME, but we don't assume that you're going to write C++. It's to a large extent based on Scheme, which is a dialect of LISP. LISP being the most powerful and cleanest of languages, that's the language that's the GNU project always prefers." — Richard Stallman
"Some may say Ruby is a bad rip-off of Lisp or Smalltalk, and I admit that. But it is nicer to ordinary people." — Matz, LL2
"Please don’t assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." — Kent Pitman
“Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.” — Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"
“One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented.” — Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach
“Within a couple weeks of learning Lisp I found programming in any other language unbearably constraining.” — Paul Graham, Road to Lisp
“Lisp is the most sophisticated programming language I know. It is literally decades ahead of the competition ... it is not possible (as far as I know) to actually use Lisp seriously before reaching the point of no return.” — Christian Lynbech, Road to Lisp
“Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.” — Philip Greenspun
“We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy?” — Guy Steele, Java spec co-author, LL1 mailing list, 2003
“Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.” — Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10
“Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp.” — Paul Graham
“Lisp ... made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics.” — L. Peter Deutsch
“Lisp is a programmable programming language.” — John Foderaro, CACM, September 1991
“Will write code that writes code that writes code that writes code for money.” — on comp.lang.lisp
“I object to doing things that computers can do.” — Olin Shivers
“Lisp is a language for doing what you've been told is impossible.” — Kent Pitman
“Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.” — Marvin Minsky
“Programming in Lisp is like playing with the primordial forces of the universe. It feels like lightning between your fingertips. No other language even feels close.” — Glenn Ehrlich, Road to Lisp
“Lisp is the red pill.” — John Fraser, on comp.lang.lisp
“The language God would have used to implement the Universe.” — Svein Ove Aas, Road to Lisp
"If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror." — Erik Naggum
"Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages." — Eric S. Raymond
"You can use C++ if you want with GNOME, but we don't assume that you're going to write C++. It's to a large extent based on Scheme, which is a dialect of LISP. LISP being the most powerful and cleanest of languages, that's the language that's the GNU project always prefers." — Richard Stallman
"Some may say Ruby is a bad rip-off of Lisp or Smalltalk, and I admit that. But it is nicer to ordinary people." — Matz, LL2
"Please don’t assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." — Kent Pitman