BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Register Sign in

Unlock the full InfoQ experience

Unlock the full InfoQ experience by logging in! Stay updated with your favorite authors and topics, engage with content, and download exclusive resources.

Log In

or

Don't have an InfoQ account?

Stay updated on topics and peers that matter to youReceive instant alerts on the latest insights and trends.
Quickly access free resources for continuous learningMinibooks, videos with transcripts, and training materials.
Save articles and read at anytimeBookmark articles to read whenever youre ready.

Logo - Back to homepage

News Articles Presentations Podcasts Guides

Topics

Development

Featured in Development

Expanding Swift from Apps to Services

Cory Benfield discusses the evolution of Swift from an app language to a critical tool for secure, high-scale services. He explains how Swift’s lack of a garbage collector eliminates tail latency and shares how its "zero-cost abstractions" rival C performance. He shares Apple’s roadmap for incremental adoption and demonstrates groundbreaking new interoperability for C++ and Java ecosystems.

All in development

Architecture & Design

Featured in Architecture & Design

Software Evolution with Microservices and LLMs: A Conversation with Chris Richardson

In this podcast, Michael Stiefel spoke with Chris Richardson about using microservices to modernize software applications and the use of artificial intelligence in software architecture. We first discussed the problems of monolithic enterprise software and how to use microservices to evolve them to enable fast flow - the ability to achieve rapid software delivery.

All in architecture-design

AI Infrastructure

Featured in AI, ML & Data Engineering

Building a Least-Privilege AI Agent Gateway for Infrastructure Automation with MCP, OPA, and Ephemeral Runners

This article presents a least-privilege AI Agent Gateway that places clear controls between AI agents and infrastructure. Agents do not access infrastructure APIs directly. Instead, every request is validated, authorized using policy as code with Open Policy Agent (OPA), and executed in short-lived, isolated environments, with built-in observability using OpenTelemetry.

All in ai-ml-data-eng

Culture & Methods

Featured in Culture & Methods

Virtual Panel - Culture, Code, and Platform: Building High-Performing Teams

In this virtual panel, we'll focus on performance improvement through platform engineering and fostering developer experience, to increase productivity, quality, developer well-being, and more. We'll also explore the role that tech leadership can play in culture change and performance improvement for software development organizations.

All in culture-methods

DevOps

Featured in DevOps

Proactive Autoscaling for Edge Applications in Kubernetes

Kubernetes often reacts too late when traffic suddenly increases at the edge. A proactive scaling approach that considers response time, spare CPU capacity, and container startup delays can add or remove instances more smoothly, prevent sudden spikes, and keep performance stable on systems with limited resources.

All in devops

Events

Helpful links

Choose your language

InfoQ Architect Certification

Join Luca Mezzalira for this 5-week online cohort. Master socio-technical architecture leadership.

Register Interest.

QCon London 2026

Learn what works in AI, architecture, data, security & FinTech.

Early Bird ends March 10.

Learn how leading engineering teams run AI in production—reliably, securely, and at scale.

Early Bird ends March 10.

QCon San Francisco

Learn what's next in AI and software, from teams already doing it.

Early Bird ends March 10.

InfoQ Homepage Interviews Guy Steele Interviews John McCarthy, Father of Lisp

Guy Steele Interviews John McCarthy, Father of Lisp

56:06

Bio

John McCarthy has been involved in Artificial Intelligence since 1948, a term he coined in 1955. He has been mainly interested in formalization of common sense knowledge. He designed LISP in 1958 and developed the concept of time-sharing. Among others, he has received the Turing Award, the Research Excellence Award, and the Kyoto Prize.

About the conference

Starting in 1986, OOPSLA Conference has proven to be the cradle of many techniques and methodologies that have become mainstream over the years: OOP, Patterns, AOP, XP, Unit Testing, UML, Wiki, and Refactoring. Gaining its prestige with 3 academic tracks, OOPSLA Conference has managed to attract researchers, educators and developers every year. The event is sponsored by ACM.

May 01, 2009

Interview with

John McCarthy

by

Guy Steele

BT