Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp

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Mark Wutka

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Jun 17, 2023, 10:55:53 AM6/17/23

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Hi Everyone!

I only learned this today, maybe it was common knowledge, but Reddit 1.0 was written in Common Lisp, and the source code is available on Github here:

https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit1.0

It's pretty straightforward, and is only about 4000 lines long, and probably less because I think old.lisp is 693 lines and it is not part of the package. There are only 276 functions and 24 macros. If you are looking for how it hooks into the web server, it is using a web server named TBNL (later renamed to hunchentoot) and the *dispatch-table* variable defined in web.lisp sets up all the URLs.

Sriram Krishnamurthi at Brown U posted this about it today:

I've read multiple times that Reddit 1.0 was written in Lisp. I didn't realize the source is public.

It's amazing. You can read the whole thing in one sitting. Even an undergrad could. It's like the essence of a…Reddit.