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fogus
lithp
Python2009–2012
fogus / lithp

lithp

McCarthy's Lisp in Python with macros. A celebration of 50+ years of symbolic processing.

2Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
264GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

McCarthy's Lisp in Python with macros. A celebration of 50+ years of symbolic processing.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month7 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2009-10-08 15:35:11 UTC to 2012-01-25 21:31:26 UTC.

012009-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsOct 20092009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsNov 20102010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2011-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2011-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJan 2012

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Oct 20092009-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Nov 20092009-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20092009-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Feb 20102010-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20102010-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20102010-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20102010-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jun 20102010-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jul 20102010-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20102010-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Sep 20102010-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20102010-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20102010-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20102010-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 20112011-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20112011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20112011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC000
May 20112011-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jun 20112011-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20112011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20112011-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20112011-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20112011-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-11-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Nov 20112011-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20112011-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jan 20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

7 sources
https://github.com/fogus/lithp http://picolisp.com/5000/-2.html http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ http://www.lambdassociates.org/Lib/libraries.htm http://www.newlisp.org/ http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html http://sites.google.com/site/waspvm/ Fluchtpunkt Lisps are… Focused: Uncompromising in their vision Spartan: Devoid of the seemingly unnecessary comforts found in many modern languages Controversial: Not always by design, but often because of their design Fun
In The German School of Lisp ("Fluchtpunkt Lisps")
One note of interest about pg's source code is that the dot functions (and., pair., etc...) are based in the host Lisp and not `eval.`. The implications are that pg's functions can take advantage of lexical scope, whereas McCarthy's original Lisp was dynamically scoped. This will make a huge difference if you are so inclined to use pg's code to do some hardcore Lisp anthropology. I did so a few years back using pg's code and it was a blast. I then wrote a small Lisp runtime with dynamic scope (http://github.com/fogus/lithp) to do the same exercise and it turned out to be a very different experience. It's worth trying it out to gain a full appreciation for the tools the Lisp pioneer's had to work with. Thanks for linking this article -- it's one of my favorites.
In The Roots of Lisp

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