From the foreword to The Seasoned Schemer:
“LISP” originally stood for “LISt Processing.” By the same token, I suppose that the C programming language could have been called CHAP (for “CHAracter Processing”) and Fortran could have been called FLOP (for “FLOating-point processing”).
Guy L Steele Jr.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
BEN BRADLEY 02.15.12 at 20:18
IT’S FORTRAN, NOT Fortran! EVERYTHING WAS UPPER CASE BACK THEN! #YESIHAVETYPEDFORTRANONAKEYPUNCHMACHINE #029
alfC 02.15.12 at 21:39
Needless to say FORTRAN means FORmula TRANslator already, because it translated formulas in common notation (mostly) to machine code. Also, why is C a “character processors”? maybe a “HIgh LEvel MEmory MAnager” (HILEMEMA) is a better description. Also FORTRAN existed even before floating-point (as opposed to fixed point arithmetic). didn’t it?
dodgy_coder 02.15.12 at 22:46
You missed an important one … COBOL = CRAP (CRitical Application Processing)
John 02.16.12 at 18:38
JavaScript = DOMP (Document Object Model Processing)