I wrote a technical history book on Lisp
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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.
HN · launched Feb 17, 2026 · 252 upvotes (top 3%) · 1 view
Niche: developer learning resources and directories · 122 launches, 2 in the last 7 days ▼ -75% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Content generation
- B2C
- Not AI
- Commercial product
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More like this: all 122 launches in developer learning resources and directories →
Could you build this?
No Writing a detailed technical history book requires years of deep domain research, archival investigation, interviews, and comprehensive original writing that AI tools cannot spontaneously produce.
What it would actually take: Producing this work requires extensive historiographical research into early computing literature, deep technical mastery of Lisp dialects from the late 1950s onward (Lisp 1.5, Interlisp, Maclisp, Common Lisp, Scheme), and access to historical archives, primary documents, and surviving pioneer accounts. The project is an intellectual labor requiring scholarly domain authority, synthesis of complex architectural evolutions, and rigorous prose authoring spanning years.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Book content presentation unclear for some readers, Geographic bias toward North American history, Limited code examples (mostly illustrations, not tutorials)
Feature requests: RSS feed for errata updates, More code-rich chapters beyond Maxwell equations section, Expanded international/European Lisp history coverage
Competitors
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Attention rank: #24 of 486 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 111 days after the earliest competitor.
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