Why Lisp? – (defun games ())
My first look at Lisp was during a course I took back in 1991 for my undergrad. I had a keen interest in artificial intelligence, but I had to drop the official AI course due to a scheduling conflict with one of my main degree requirements. As a consolation, I took what I somewhat dejectedly thought would be the next best thing. This was a 1-credit elective course on Common Lisp . I didn’t know much about Lisp beyond that it was said to be linked to AI. I was already working with Prolog at the time , which I then considered to be the “real” AI language. I felt I could make computing magic with Prolog. I could program in ways that went beyond what was possible using Pascal or C, the languages I needed for my other university courses.
The Lisp elective was very much my second choice, but I knew that Common Lisp was the language I would have been using in the AI course I had been forced to drop. To make my scheduling woes just a tiny bit worse, on the first day of class I got the impression that the instructor really wanted to be teaching Scheme, which she touted as a version of Lisp aimed at academic research. It was streamlined, slimmed down to just the essentials. Of course, to me it felt like Scheme would have been yet another jump away from the course I really wanted to take. The language didn’t even have Lisp in the name.
