LISP Machine CADR LISP Machine,
MIT Museum

Software Engineering Radio had Richard Gabriel, of Lucid and "worse-is-better" fame, on for a chat about Lisp. Gabriel provides a interesting, quick history of Lisp and some of the important concepts it introduced. Included some trivia I didn't know like "car" and "cdr" stand for "contents of address of register" and "contents of decrement of register", respectively. (So obvious for getting the first/rest elements of a list!) When asked about the state of Lisp in use today, he mentions some AI research, ITA and Yahoo Stores (Viaweb), which are the only ones I knew -- there must be more, right? Gabriel also talks a little bit about his MFA in poetry (a true code-poet!) and the study of software, which I wrote about related to "Dreaming in Code".

Although sometimes the topics are too dry or enterprise-y for my taste, SE Radio does a great job for a tech podcast. The interviewer is knowledgable, asks good questions and lets his guest speak, which is surprisingly rare.

If you're new here, you may wish to follow me on twitter, subscribe to via RSS or via email.