NOTE: references appreciated!

History of Lisp Parentheses

A historical look at the many attempts to improve Lisp's most notorious artifact—parentheses.

I'd like to find out how people tolerated parens back in the golden days of Lisp. I have a feeling we might've forgotten some things that would be useful today, or might influence some new ideas.

Roughly, we cover the history in four parts:

1. Why Parens?
2. Editors
3. Alternative Syntaxes
4. Visual Decorations

Archived References

See the following archive of historical papers and manuals referenced in the sections above:

https://archive.org/details/history-of-lisp-parens