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Show HN: I wrote a technical history book on Lisp
Hacker News · Feb 17, 2026 · Collected from RSS
Summary
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my current projects, Common Lisp is a better fit, so I call myself "a Lisp-er" these days. If people like what I did, I do have plans to write some more (but probably only after I retire, writing next to a full-time job is heard). Maybe on Smalltalk, maybe on computer networks - two topics close to my heart. And a shout-out to Dick Gabriel, he contributed some great personal memories about the man who started it all, John McCarthy. Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47048733 Points: 18 # Comments: 2
Full Article
Table of Contents The Genius Of Lisp Where to buy Feedback Source code Linkable bibliography Errata The Genius Of Lisp Cees de Groot has put together a masterpiece of scholarship. — Richard P. Gabriel ⊕ “The Genius Of Lisp” is a book published by Berksoft Publications on the history of arguably the most powerful programming language in the history of computing. Here is some background by the author, Cees de Groot (that’s me! ;-)). This page is the jumping board for content that complements the book. If you want to read a sample, Amazon has got you covered. Where to buy We’re still working on extending the book’s reach, but here is a list of places where you can buy. Our preference is Lulu.com - it’s a Certified B Corp, great people, and of course buying there will maximize our share of what you pay :-). Ebook, paperback: Lulu Bookstore Ebook: Kobo books Paperback, hardcover: Amazon .CA .COM .CO.UK .DE .NL, and so on. Feedback For now, please hop on Libera Chat and join the book’s IRC channel, ##geniusoflispbook. If you’re not setup for IRC, you can use Libera’s web client. You can also find me on Mastodon and Lemmy. There’s a “Show HN” topic on Hacker News which I’ll scour for feedback as well. If there is enough interest, I’ll probably whip up a Discourse instance shortly. Let me now. Source code ⊕ tar is available on Linux and macOS by default; on Windows you can use 7-Zip to extract, among others. You can download a tar file with the source code used in the book. Linkable bibliography Here is a simple rendition of the book’s bibliography with clickable URLs. Errata Nobody is perfect, so we will collect and publish errata here. Please give feedback and help to make it a better book! Author: Cees de Groot Created: 2026-02-17 Tue 11:48
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