@paulg LISP but without ()
Paul Graham@paulg
Y Combinator makes something people who make something people want want.
1:53 AM · Jul 1, 2026 · 81 Views
Technical commentators joke that a highly recursive post by Paul Graham resembles Lisp without parentheses
Story Overview
Paul Graham posted a single sentence describing Y Combinator that folds the familiar "make something people want" phrasing back on itself, creating an extra layer of self-reference that immediately prompted jokes about missing Lisp parentheses.
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FYI
Replies that named the pattern
Engineers and founders jumped in with quick observations that the sentence felt like Lisp stripped of its brackets, one calling it exactly that and another noting it needed more parentheses for the mental parser to finish cleanly.
Open Question
Graham's own take on the resemblance
When the Lisp comparison surfaced, Graham replied that the post kind of matches the language in spirit, though the thread leaves open how many more nested layers the original phrasing could absorb before the joke stops landing.
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Blake Scholl 🛫@bscholl
@paulg Needs more parentheses
Paul Graham@paulg
Y Combinator makes something people who make something people want want.
1hViews 458Likes 7Bookmarks 0
Kevin Gray@graykevinb
@bscholl @paulg no more em-dashes
1hViews 9
Robert Garrett@rgarrett88
@bscholl @paulg This is your brain on lisp
1hViews 3