John McCarthy

Most-linked posts?

1. Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine
   16 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2008-02-25
2. John McCarthy‘s ACM paper on Lisp from April 1960 (59 years ago) [pdf]
   14 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2009-09-25
3. A Proposal For the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on A.I. (1955)
   10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2007-06-04
4. Lisp inventor John McCarthy on human progress and its sustainability
   9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-06-25
5. Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts (1989)
   8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2008-05-06
6. Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions Computation by Machine (1960)
   8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2009-09-16
7. He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense
   8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-05-06
8. John McCarthy: The Robot and the Baby
   8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2007-04-29
9. Nuclear Energy FAQ - John McCarthy
   5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2008-03-27
10. John McCarthy's thoughts on home delivery, skywires, earlids, 21st century tech
    5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-10-24

What Hacker News says?

1. finnw · 2011-10-24

   Can be found here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...

   Comment linking /jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.html

   on “John McCarthy Has Died”
2. bootload · 2011-10-24

   Submitted John McCarthy: The Robot and the Baby as a story · 234 points

   HN discussion
3. beefman · 2011-10-24

   Progress and its Sustainability http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/elephant/elephant.html

   Comment linking /jmc/elephant/elephant.html

   on “John McCarthy Has Died”
4. birdculture · 2025-11-02

   Submitted Lisp: Notes on its Past and Future (1980) as a story · 193 points

   HN discussion
5. dpritchett · 2011-10-24

   Here's the 1960 paper describing the original Lisp: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html

   Comment linking /jmc/recursive/recursive.html

   on “John McCarthy Has Died”
6. pg · 2011-10-24

   Submitted Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine as a story · 165 points

   HN discussion
7. robotresearcher · 2016-01-26

   More than an attendee, he was one of the proposers. The proposal: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmou...

   Comment linking /jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html

   on “Marvin Minsky dies at 88”
8. maxharris · 2011-02-09

   Submitted Lisp inventor John McCarthy on human progress and its sustainability as a story · 136 points

   HN discussion
9. YeGoblynQueenne · 2026-09-12

   >> This sounds a lot to me like people in the 90's complaining that computers were destroying chess. Genuine question: who were those people saying that? I don't know that criticism. The criticism I know is from AI researchers and it is that beating humans at chess using a computer running an algorithm unlike anything that humans do when they play chess, tells us nothing about the way that humans play chess, which i…

   Comment linking /jmc/newborn/newborn.html

   on “A misalignment of AI in mathematics”
10. llambda · 2013-06-05

    Submitted History of Lisp as a story · 130 points

    HN discussion
11. 110 · 2024-09-29

    Umm, customary, tongue-in-cheek reference to McCarthy's proposal for a 10 person research team to solve AI in 2 months (over the Summers)[1]. This was ~70 years ago :) Not saying we're in necessarily the same situation. But it remains difficult to evaluate effort required for actual progress. [1]: https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmo...

    Comment linking /jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html

    on “I Am Tired of AI”
12. projectramo · 2016-07-12

    Submitted A Proposal For the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on A.I. (1955) as a story · 124 points

    HN discussion
13. wongarsu · 2025-12-04

    That's because there are at least 5 different definitions of AI. - At it's inception in 1955 it was "learning or any other feature of intelligence" simulated by a machine [1] (fun fact: both neural networks and computers using natural language were on the agenda back then) - Following from that we have the "all machine learning is AI" which was the prevalent definition about a decade ago - Then there's the academic…

    Comment linking /jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html

    on “Everyone in Seattle hates AI”
14. protagonist_h · 2011-10-24

    Submitted John McCarthy's proposal for the language of the future as a story · 115 points

    HN discussion
15. emidln · 2017-08-24Recommends

    A bit cliche for HN, but I really enjoyed RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE (Part I) by John McCarthy[0]. It was accessible to someone whose background at the time was not CS and convinced me of the beauty of CS -- and lisp. [0] - http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.html

    on “Ask HN: What is your favorite CS paper?”
16. zitterbewegung · 2011-10-25

    Submitted John McCarthy's website where you can find all of his papers as a story · 105 points

    HN discussion
17. baq · 2024-05-22

    See also: 'Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine' (1960) [1] [1] https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.pdf

    on “Try Clojure”
18. ColinWright · 2014-01-01

    Submitted “The Robot and the Baby” by John McCarthy as a story · 104 points

    HN discussion
19. FredrikMeyer · 2017-11-15

    I was about to post your number 3 before I saw it here. Here's a link to it: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.html

    on “Ask HN: What are some interesting papers in CS for a beginner?”
20. benbreen · 2021-08-14

    Submitted A Proposal for the Dartmouth Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (1955) as a story · 69 points

    HN discussion
21. agentultra · 2017-11-14

    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.67....

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.html

    on “Ask HN: What are some interesting papers in CS for a beginner?”
22. abrax3141 · 2022-10-04

    Submitted Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions Computation by Machine (1960) as a story · 65 points

    HN discussion
23. lambda · 2020-12-28

    Huh. That's an interesting question. I looked up the original LISP paper ( http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf ), and it looks like the -p convention hadn't been established yet at that point, none of the predicates have that suffix in the paper. But it does say this: (LABEL, SUBST, (LAMBDA, (X, Y, Z), (COND ((ATOM, Z), (COND,(EQ, Y, Z), X), ((QUOTE, T), Z))), ((QUOTE, T), (CONS, (SUBST, X, Y,(CAR Z)),…

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.pdf

    on “Print this file, your printer will jam (2008)”
24. DennisCooper · 2016-07-25

    Submitted Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation (1960) as a story · 61 points

    HN discussion
25. lispm · 2016-12-17

    That's strange. McCarthy describes a mark&sweep GC. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/node4.html

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive/node4.html

    on “The Idea of Lisp”
26. p4bl0 · 2011-06-07

    Submitted He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense as a story · 51 points

    HN discussion
27. vram22 · 2016-12-16

    For anyone interested, John McCarthy's original paper on Lisp is here: RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE (Part I) http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html From the page: "This paper appeared in Communications of the ACM in April 1960. It is the original paper on Lisp." I had mentioned it in this blog post in which I gave a few examples of doing simple computations…

    Comment linking /jmc/recursive.html

    on “The Idea of Lisp”
28. carls · 2014-01-02

    Submitted Technology and the Position of Women by John McCarthy as a story · 49 points

    HN discussion
29. pg314 · 2016-12-16

    And the implementation of garbage collection was, on at least two occasions, postponed. Once in the first implementation [1] and a second time in the early MIT Lisp Machines [2] (you just ran the machine until you ran out of memory which could take days or weeks, after which you saved the world to disk and rebooted). [1] http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node3.html [2] https://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses…

    Comment linking /jmc/history/lisp/node3.html

    on “The Idea of Lisp”
30. jpelecanos · 2017-08-17

    Submitted Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of AI (1969) [pdf] as a story · 45 points

    HN discussion

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• RRichard P. Gabrieldreamsongs.com
• JJohn McCarthyjmc.stanford.edu
• RRon Garretflownet.com
• KKent Pitmannhplace.com
• CCosma Shalizicscs.umich.edu
• PPeter Seibelgigamonkeys.com
• TT3X.ORG indext3x.org
• PPhilip Greenspunphilip.greenspun.com