LISP

The other major language besides COBOL to be developed in 1959 was LISP. LISP, which stands for LISt Processing, was developed by John McCarthy for artificial intelligence applications. For the most part, LISP has not seen widespread use outside of the academic community. One exception to this was during the mid 1980s, as "expert system" technology, often written in LISP, saw a flurry of commercial use. Several computer vendors , including Symbolics (now defunct ), Xerox, and Texas Instruments, even developed special purpose workstations during this time that were specifically designed to execute LISP code. While Simula, developed in 1967, is generally credited with being the first object-oriented language, LISP certainly contributed greatly to the experience base of object-oriented programmers. Symbolics developed their own object-oriented extensions to LISP called Flavors, that later became the basis for the Common LISP Object System which is now a part of the standard Common LISP language. Xerox, in part out of its experiences with LISP, developed Smalltalk, an object-oriented language that is still used today.