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Comment on Ask HN: Why were people crazy about Lisp during 70s and 80s?

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Just as modern static languages date back to 1950s FORTRAN, dynamic languages date back to 1950s LISP.

Today a person who uses LISP might use Python, TCL, Node.js, Lua, etc.

Despite attempts (Algol, Ada, ...), there wasn't really a portable language for general systems programming until C came along. FORTRAN and COBOL were designed for specific application domains. Pascal was intended for education although I thought Borland's Turbo Pascal was better than C for real work in 1990.

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