Comment by fernly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fernly | Hacker News Reader

For context, the first FORTRAN compiler was delivered in 1957[1] and LISP in 1958[2].

My eye was caught by this remark, a propos the careful specification of Algol 60's syntax,

> indeed many early languages were virtually defined by the action (not always predictable) of their compilers.

But they immediately qualify that with

> Unfortunately the rigour with which the syntax of ALGOL is defined does not extend to the semantics...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)#Hi...

LISP more like 1960 for LISP I -- see http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp15_fam...:

J. McCarthy, R. Brayton, D. Edwards, P. Fox, L. Hodes, D. Luckham, K. Maling, D. Park and S. Russell. LISP I Programmer's Manual. Computation Center and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1, 1960.

    Copy 1: Computer History Museum Lot X????.200?, George Michael donation. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/rle_lisp/LISP_I_Programmers_Manual_Mar60.pdf
    Copy 2: Science and Technology Collection, M.I.T. Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, catalog number 1993.053, donated by Timothy P. Hart. Missing cover and Acknowledgements. http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%20I%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf
    Copy 3: From Supplementary Materials for Oral History of Phyllis A. Fox. The History of Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). http://history.siam.org/sup/Fox_1960_LISP.pdf

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