---
title: "The Evolution of Lisp"
authors:
  - "Guy L. Steele Jr."
  - "Richard P. Gabriel"
year: 1993
venue: "HOPL-II / ACM SIGPLAN Notices"
arxiv: null
doi: "10.1145/155360.155373"
source: "https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155373"
topics:
  - lisp
  - history
  - steele
  - gabriel
  - hopl
seed_rank: 676
seed_batch: "perfects-pl-2026-08-13"
reviewed: "2026-08-13"
pool: "languages"
relevance_score: 10
lineage: programming-language-foundations
cites:
  - title: "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I"
    url: "https://doi.org/10.1145/367177.367199"
    year: 1960
    arxiv: null
    doi: "10.1145/367177.367199"
  - title: "Scheme: An Interpreter for Extended Lambda Calculus"
    url: "https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5794"
    year: 1975
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
  - title: "RABBIT: A Compiler for Scheme"
    url: "https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6913"
    year: 1978
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
see:
  - "575-recursive-functions-of-symbolic-expressions-and-their-comput"
  - "673-scheme-an-interpreter-for-extended-lambda-calculus"
  - "674-rabbit-a-compiler-for-scheme"
---

# The Evolution of Lisp

## One-sentence takeaway

Steele and Gabriel's HOPL-II paper traces Lisp from the PDP-6 era through Interlisp, MacLisp, Lisp machines, and the split into industrial Common Lisp and the small, pure Scheme dialect.

## Why it matters here

This is the single historical card for why Broadside's Lisp family is two cultures — messy-powerful and small-powerful — and why ano should pick a dialect on purpose rather than inherit one by accident.

## Key ideas

- Evolution was driven as much by lab rivalry and hacker one-upmanship as by requirements; the result is still two living poles, not one language.
- Feature post-mortems (successes and failures) are the technical core: what distinguished Lisp from ALGOL-family languages, and which experiments died.
- Lisp as a laboratory for designing *other* languages is an explicit theme, not a side remark.
- HOPL-II / *SIGPLAN Notices* 28(3), 1993, DOI 10.1145/155360.155373. Picks up where McCarthy's HOPL-I paper stopped.

## Caveats

## Links

- DOI: [10.1145/155360.155373](https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155373)