Why was an entire programming language invented just so computers could think?
LISP was written for AI before AI even had a name - and some dialects are still used today.
The answer
LISP (LISt Processing), created by John McCarthy at MIT in 1958, became the dominant programming language of artificial intelligence research for over three decades. McCarthy designed it specifically for symbolic computation and mathematical logic - core requirements for AI - introducing revolutionary features like recursive functions, dynamic typing, garbage collection, and the concept of programs as data (homoiconicity). LISP's flexibility made it ideal for rapid prototyping of AI ideas, and it spawned commercial variants, dedicated LISP machines from companies like Symbolics, and dialects like Common Lisp and Scheme. It is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in use today, after Fortran, and its ideas directly influenced modern languages including Python, JavaScript, and Clojure.
Source: MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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