Dick Gabriel in Lisp

At the beginning of the podcast, Dick Gabriel talks about the Lisp programming language. Throughout the podcast, he talks about the benefits of this language and the fact that the data and programs are similar for Lisp, the ease of use of threads and how artificial intelligence can be used with the characteristics and functionalities of this language.
One of the many features that makes Lisp a very powerful programming language are macros, since it allows the addition of new functionalities in the language. Because Lisp is written in the same syntax, then you can increase the functionality of the language itself with the use of macros. I think that this feature could be very functional for artificial intelligence, because if artificial intelligence finds that there are some features missing in the language, this features can be build with the syntax that it is known by the AI.
Something that I agree with the conversation is the fact that Lisp is an elegant language but it does not mean that it is friendly for users. Lisp is very powerful as a tool since you can easily apply the same function for a large list of parameters, as in the case of the sum in which you must put the operand once and all the parameters that you pass will be evaluated by the function. This is why Lisp is considered as a very compact language.
Another interesting thing that can be taken from the podcast is that Lisp can compute everything that is computable. And of course, in a more compact way than the Turing machine. I think Lisp could be a very competent language nowadays if many developers use it. Lisp is a powerful, compact and simple language to learn because its structure is maintained on each part.
On the other hand, I think that with all the contributions of John McCarthy (founder of Lisp) to artificial intelligence, Lisp could really fit into this branch, for all the potential it could give to the development of this branch.

Finally, I can say that, even though I have been learning about Lisp (or to be more specific, about Clojure) for a short time, I can say that this language competes with a lot of the current languages, so in my opinion Lisp was really ahead at its time. I think that Lisp has a lot of potential in the branch of artificial intelligence, as well as in many branches of computing but developers must accept a different way of thinking.

References
Gabriel D. (2008). Episode 84: Dick Gabriel on Lisp. Software Engineering Radio.
http://www.se-radio.net/2008/01/episode-84-dick-gabriel-on-lisp/

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