"McCarthy explained Lisp to his readers by building it up out of only a very small collection of rules.
Paul Graham later retraced McCarthy’s steps, using more readable language, in his essay “The Roots of Lisp” (http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html).
Graham is able to explain Lisp using only seven primitive operators, two different notations for functions, and a half-dozen higher-level functions defined in terms of the primitive operators."
"McCarthy explained Lisp to his readers by building it up out of only a very small collection of rules.
Paul Graham later retraced McCarthy’s steps, using more readable language, in his essay “The Roots of Lisp” (http://www.paulgraham.com/rootsoflisp.html).
Graham is able to explain Lisp using only seven primitive operators, two different notations for functions, and a half-dozen higher-level functions defined in terms of the primitive operators."