Common LISP

Common LISP was created in an effort to unite all the different LISP implementations by providing standard language. It has evolved into a very large (the ANSI draft specification is 1300 pages) and powerful language.

Common LISP is one of the two large LISP dialects in use (the other one being Scheme).

C progammers will probably find CL's compilation support to be byzantine, what with all the eval-when, etc. Then again, I think C programmers would find any system that supported both interpretation and compilation in a sane way to be at least bizarre, if not complex. I suppose it all depends on where you come from.

Common Lisp doesn't have call/cc, but we forgive it.

This is the genealogy of the programming language Common Lisp:

Common Lisp is a child of Lisp.
Common Lisp was born in year 1984.
Then it begat Clos in year 1989.
It became Common Lisp ANSI in year 1994, and has not changed much since that time.

This genealogy is brought to you by the Programming Languages Genealogy Project.