How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language

I still fondly (I think fondly?) remember learning Lisp in the Computer Science curriculum at the University of Minnesota.

But there is one language that seems to inspire a peculiar universal reverence: Lisp. Keyboard crusaders that would otherwise pounce on anyone daring to suggest that some language is better than any other will concede that Lisp is on another level. Lisp transcends the utilitarian criteria used to judge other languages, because the median programmer has never used Lisp to build anything practical and probably never will, yet the reverence for Lisp runs so deep that Lisp is often ascribed mystical properties.

When I took this class it was taught by Dr. John Carlis, who sadly passed away in 2018. I got to know John as an undergraduate partly through my friendship with John Riedl.

Dr. Carlis taught the Lisp class and on the first day of the class he asked the students to raise their hand if they knew one programming language. Of course we all did, it was a CSci class! He kept counting. Two, three, four. As he got up to five there were few hands still up. He went to six and I and a couple of other students still had our hands up. Personally I was pretty proud to be showing off my depth in languages.

Dr. Carlis then looked at us that still had our hands up and emphatically stated that for those of you with your hands still up you will have the hardest time in this class. Lisp requires you to think in an entirely different way. He was right by the way.