McCarthy, on the other hand, is the father of Lisp, one of the earliest programming languages. In many ways, C and Lisp are opposites in terms of design, implementation, and approach.

John McCarthy, 1927-2011 John McCarthy died, leaving behind a legacy as the father of AI and a pioneer of the Lisp programming language.

Developed by MIT alum John McCarthy in 1959, LISP is one of the oldest programming languages, yet companies including Cadence and Grammarly still use it to build commercial products.

Comcast Software Engineer Daisy Kid Henderson explains how LISP helped her team with a unique challenge.

Famed computer scientist Alan Kay called Lisp the "greatest single programming language ever designed." McCarthy also played a major role in the development of time-sharing systems.