How I met John McCarthy, the inventor of Lisp & Godfather of AI

A personal anecdote about meeting John McCarthy, the creator of Lisp and AI pioneer, as a Stanford sophomore. Two memorable moments stand out: McCarthy's surprise at being asked about Lisp rather than AI (which was his true passion, with Lisp being merely a means to an end — much like Newton inventing calculus for physics), and McCarthy playfully showing off custom Emacs macros to an impressed college student.