LISP: The language of AI
LISP stands for List Processing. Someone calls it "Lots of
Idiotic and silly parenthesis." It was created during
1956-62 by John McCarthy in MIT for nonnumerical
computation. Later it is used specifically for the
development of artificial intelligence. There are many
different versions of LISP e.g. Common Lisp, Franz
LISP...etc. XLISP is one of many dialects, which was
developed by David Betz.
Lisp was indeed once a very popular programming language for
AI, but its popularity has waned over time. While modern
Lisp implementations can be quite fast, historically, Lisp
had a reputation for being slower than lower-level languages
like C or C++. This perception persisted even as
implementations improved. Later languages like Python, Java,
and C++ gained popularity in AI and machine learning. These
languages often offer similar features to Lisp (such as
garbage collection and high-level abstractions) while being
more widely used in other domains.
XLISP-STAT was developed by Luke Tierney. This package has
many built-in statistical functions. Many free statistical
software like ARC (nonlinear curve fitting problems) and
ViSta are based on this package. In the 1990s it was in very
widespread use in statistical education, but has since been
mostly replaced by R.
XLISP-STAT was one of the early systems to integrate a full
programming language with statistical analysis and dynamic
graphics capabilities. While XLISP-STAT itself is no longer
a current tool in the statistical computing landscape, its
influence can be seen in modern statistical software that
emphasizes interactive graphics and programmable
environments.