The Howdy Glossary

Mocklisp is a simplified version of the Lisp programming language. This dialect was created in the 1980s to serve as an educational tool for teaching undergraduate computer science students at MIT. Mocklisp, employed in introductory courses, offered a less complex syntax and semantics than traditional Lisp to ease students into functional programming paradigms. Its name is a nod to its function: emulating certain features of true Lisp without fully implementing them. Students who grasped Mocklisp could move on to more advanced languages with enhanced understanding of the principles that are foundational to many computing systems today.