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Alan Kay said :- (SF) If nothing else, Lisp was carefully defined in terms of Lisp. (AK) Yes, that was the big revelation to me when I was in graduate
by keithnz 8y ago
Alan Kay said :-
(SF) If nothing else, Lisp was carefully defined in terms of Lisp.
(AK) Yes, that was the big revelation to me when I was in
graduate school—when I finally understood that the half
page of code on the bottom of page 13 of the Lisp 1.5
manual was Lisp in itself. These were “Maxwell’s
Equations of Software!” This is the whole world of
programming in a few lines that I can put my hand over.
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
- WalterGR 8y agoPreformatted text on HN is really hard to read on mobile. Reformatted: (SF) If nothing else, Lisp was carefully defined in terms of Lisp. (AK) Yes, that was the big revelation to me when I was in graduate school—when I finally understood that the half page of code on the bottom of page 13 of the Lisp 1.5 manual was Lisp in itself. These were “Maxwell’s Equations of Software!” This is the whole world of programming in a few lines that I can put my hand over. Page 13 of that manual is page 21 of this PDF: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%...
- ngcc_hk 8y agoHard to read when quote like this.