LISP is the only computer programming language so far to be discovered, rather than invented.

When people say "LISP," do they mean the original Lisp, Common Lisp, or (Scheme, Dylan, EmacsLisp, Qi, Arc, Common Lisp, ... ) inclusive?

They mean any language that has s-expressions, car and cdr, gc and lambda.

When people aren't talking generally they offer specifics. For example, lexical scope might be discussed in relation to Scheme, module systems in terms of Common LISP.

On the subject of the claim, I was actually recently thinking about how a mathematician "discovers" something rather than "invents" it; I suppose since the relation they're describing was always there but we didn't know about it.

Since Lisp is based on a mathematical formalism, it would make sense that it would be "discovered."

The deeper you get into lisp the more you realize how all tied it all is up in it's own ideas. It's really quite difficult to consider extending it because it's so internally consistent.

It certainly is neat. A few of the Tulsa jyters are in an AI class that requires us to learn Common Lisp and one of us (he counts as a jyter because I think he claimed once) thinks that the fact that I like it is yet another sign that I'm batshit insane.

I can't say I like Common LISP that much precisely because it gets away from that whole very tiny pure LISP thing that all just fits together. That's why I like Scheme I guess.

I know, right? LOOPS? WHAT??

After playing with Haskell for ProjectEuler for a while, I've gotten out of the habit of using them; it's seriously more natural for me to write something to be tail-recursive.