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This paper was published in 1980. I put it up since it mostly represents my present opinions. There are some 1999 footnotes.
LISP has survived for 21 years because it is an approximate local optimum in the space of programming languages. However, it has accumulated some barnacles that should be scraped off, and some long-standing opportunities for improvement have been neglected. It would benefit from some co-operative maintenance especially in creating and maintaining program libraries. Computer checked proofs of program correctness are now possible for pure LISP and some extensions, but more theory and some smoothing of the language itself are required before we can take full advantage of LISP’s mathematical basis.LISP has survived for 21 years because it is an approximate local optimum in the space of programming languages. However, it has accumulated some barnacles that should be scraped off, and some long-standing opportunities for improvement have been neglected. It would benefit from some co-operative maintenance especially in creating and maintaining program libraries. Computer checked proofs of program correctness are now possible for pure LISP and some extensions, but more theory and some smoothing of the language itself are required before we can take full advantage of LISP’s mathematical basis.