A family of programming languages dating back to the late 1950s/early 1960s, and the second oldest programming language still in active use. Despite being the originator of now-common features such as conditionals and garbage collection, it has gained a reputation of being a strange language with unusually minimal syntax (some would say no syntax, as its parentheses-riddled code is written directly in the data structure used by the compiler) and uncommonly powerful metaprogramming.
Its unofficial mascot is the Lisp Alien.
