6 ms·

Lisp from Nothing

182 points by nils-m-holm 6y ago

seg_lol 6y ago
Nils, have you thought of doing a master class? I have utterly, most thoroughly enjoyed everything you have produced. Imperative, functional, low-level, high-level it is all excellent. If having a class isn't your thing, would you consider taking requests for books?
- nils-m-holm 6y ago
  > Nils, have you thought of doing a master class? I guess you mean online? I have thought about real-life, but interest in the topics I care about is ... not so wide-spread. Online? I have heard about such things but have no idea what it would look like. I guess there would be a lot of technology involved, and I do not get along well with tech. :) > I have utterly, most thoroughly enjoyed everything you have produced. Imperative, functional, low-level, high-level it is all excellent. Thank you! This is good to hear! > would you consider taking requests for books? I am afraid not. You may make suggestions, though, and if they coincide with my plans, they might tip the scales.
  - xelxebar 6y ago
    I am in the happy position of having just stumbled upon your site for the first time. Your interests lie very close to my own. Extremely happy to know you exist. Keep blazing your trail!
  - josrod 6y ago
    You could record some video lectures and write exercises/instructions for them and put up a link to Gumroad (or any other similar service) on your website. An example: https://www.xorpd.net/pages/x86_adventures.html https://www.xorpd.net/pages/x86_adventures.html
RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
I recently implemented a similar (though more constrained) interpreter in assembly language, for the CHIP-8 virtual machine. Might be of some interest: https://internet-janitor.itch.io/bulb https://internet-janitor.itch.io/bulb
galaxyLogic 6y ago
Interesting. I looked at the code-samples. Why are there so many all-uppercase symbols?
- Syzygies 6y ago
  This book takes an historical perspective. When I bought my first computer in 1980, an Apple II, lower case required a hardware mod. Lisp had already been around for decades. In every major system one can now hide upper case conventions, but they too often default to old man shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN". And of course, those parentheses. One can easily represent trees by a notation that does away with most parentheses, but instead they've become a loyalty test. At $20 or even $30 I would have bought the PDF for this book, to keep my library complete, to support all Lisp efforts. $40 made me think. This is a pure optimization problem; one should roughly want to maximize revenue, but favoring number of copies sold for the side benefits. I doubt that $40 achieves that maximum.
  - taeric 6y ago
    If it helps, I opted for the paperback. Looking forward to giving this one a read. The caps point is interesting to me. I can't think of a good reason why caps should be shouting, but I definitely agree with it. Hilarious to remember back when mixed case was not the norm. (Also, awkward to work in languages where symbols are case sensitive. Worse when they are case significant.) I'm curious on the tree representations you mean. Most make some use of whitespace, that I have seen. But they lose the portability of the representation that I have with easy copy/paste to other environments. (To and from chats, emails, etc.)
    - Hyolobrika 6y ago
      What is "case significant" vs "case sensitive"? You seem to be speaking as though there is a difference but I can't find anything online.
      - taeric 6y ago
pabs3 6y ago
This reminds me of https://bootstrappable.org/ https://bootstrappable.org/, IIRC there is Lisp in some part of their Linux bootstrap process.
- gnufx 6y ago
  Presumably GNU MES, used for Guix: https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/ https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/
wwweston 6y ago
Has anyone ever bootstrapped first to a Forth and then to a Lisp?
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  Most people skip straight from the Forth to Fortran[0][1] or Prolog[2]. [0] http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.fall01/ftran111.f http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.fall01/ftra... [1] "Scientific Forth" (Julian V. Noble, 1992) [2] "Designing and Programming Personal Expert Systems" (Carl Townsend & Dennis Feucht, TAB Books, 1986)
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  Must. Resist. Rat-hole. I have mused about a related question since I got my first computer eons ago. It had only a machine code monitor (yes, a though start to learning what a computer was). It does seem some kind of Forth might have been the good first step on the path to high-level languages (like https://github.com/uho/preForth https://github.com/uho/preForth) but it's sure not the only way.
  - stevekemp 6y ago
    I've had a lot of fun writing a simple FORTH-like recently: https://github.com/skx/foth/ https://github.com/skx/foth/ Inspired by a previous hackernews comment-thread, I don't use a return-stack. So while I do have support for `if` it is implemented in a hardwired fashion. I'd love to spend the time to do it properly, but I suspect rabbit-hole wouldn't even begin to describe the amount of time I'd sink into it.
    - FullyFunctional 6y ago
      I did sink into it for a bit, playing with a matrix of 9 different schemes. However instead of Forth I’d implement Leroy’s ZINC model and implement a simple RPN version of the lambda calculus.
- mmphosis 6y ago
dfischer 6y ago
This is exactly the content I’m looking for. Thank you.
globular-toast 6y ago
It's been a while since I read a good book about Lisp. The last one was Let Over Lambda which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll be ordering this one for sure.

182 points by nils-m-holm 6y ago

Nils, have you thought of doing a master class? I have utterly, most thoroughly enjoyed everything you have produced. Imperative, functional, low-level, high-level it is all excellent. If having a class isn't your thing, would you consider taking requests for books?

nils-m-holm 6y ago
> Nils, have you thought of doing a master class? I guess you mean online? I have thought about real-life, but interest in the topics I care about is ... not so wide-spread. Online? I have heard about such things but have no idea what it would look like. I guess there would be a lot of technology involved, and I do not get along well with tech. :) > I have utterly, most thoroughly enjoyed everything you have produced. Imperative, functional, low-level, high-level it is all excellent. Thank you! This is good to hear! > would you consider taking requests for books? I am afraid not. You may make suggestions, though, and if they coincide with my plans, they might tip the scales.
- xelxebar 6y ago
  I am in the happy position of having just stumbled upon your site for the first time. Your interests lie very close to my own. Extremely happy to know you exist. Keep blazing your trail!
- josrod 6y ago
  You could record some video lectures and write exercises/instructions for them and put up a link to Gumroad (or any other similar service) on your website. An example: https://www.xorpd.net/pages/x86_adventures.html https://www.xorpd.net/pages/x86_adventures.html

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago

I recently implemented a similar (though more constrained) interpreter in assembly language, for the CHIP-8 virtual machine. Might be of some interest: https://internet-janitor.itch.io/bulb https://internet-janitor.itch.io/bulb

galaxyLogic 6y ago

Interesting. I looked at the code-samples. Why are there so many all-uppercase symbols?

Syzygies 6y ago
This book takes an historical perspective. When I bought my first computer in 1980, an Apple II, lower case required a hardware mod. Lisp had already been around for decades. In every major system one can now hide upper case conventions, but they too often default to old man shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN". And of course, those parentheses. One can easily represent trees by a notation that does away with most parentheses, but instead they've become a loyalty test. At $20 or even $30 I would have bought the PDF for this book, to keep my library complete, to support all Lisp efforts. $40 made me think. This is a pure optimization problem; one should roughly want to maximize revenue, but favoring number of copies sold for the side benefits. I doubt that $40 achieves that maximum.
- taeric 6y ago
  If it helps, I opted for the paperback. Looking forward to giving this one a read. The caps point is interesting to me. I can't think of a good reason why caps should be shouting, but I definitely agree with it. Hilarious to remember back when mixed case was not the norm. (Also, awkward to work in languages where symbols are case sensitive. Worse when they are case significant.) I'm curious on the tree representations you mean. Most make some use of whitespace, that I have seen. But they lose the portability of the representation that I have with easy copy/paste to other environments. (To and from chats, emails, etc.)
  - Hyolobrika 6y ago
    What is "case significant" vs "case sensitive"? You seem to be speaking as though there is a difference but I can't find anything online.
    - taeric 6y ago

pabs3 6y ago

This reminds me of https://bootstrappable.org/ https://bootstrappable.org/, IIRC there is Lisp in some part of their Linux bootstrap process.

gnufx 6y ago
Presumably GNU MES, used for Guix: https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/ https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/

wwweston 6y ago

Has anyone ever bootstrapped first to a Forth and then to a Lisp?

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
Most people skip straight from the Forth to Fortran[0][1] or Prolog[2]. [0] http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.fall01/ftran111.f http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.fall01/ftra... [1] "Scientific Forth" (Julian V. Noble, 1992) [2] "Designing and Programming Personal Expert Systems" (Carl Townsend & Dennis Feucht, TAB Books, 1986)
FullyFunctional 6y ago
Must. Resist. Rat-hole. I have mused about a related question since I got my first computer eons ago. It had only a machine code monitor (yes, a though start to learning what a computer was). It does seem some kind of Forth might have been the good first step on the path to high-level languages (like https://github.com/uho/preForth https://github.com/uho/preForth) but it's sure not the only way.
- stevekemp 6y ago
  I've had a lot of fun writing a simple FORTH-like recently: https://github.com/skx/foth/ https://github.com/skx/foth/ Inspired by a previous hackernews comment-thread, I don't use a return-stack. So while I do have support for `if` it is implemented in a hardwired fashion. I'd love to spend the time to do it properly, but I suspect rabbit-hole wouldn't even begin to describe the amount of time I'd sink into it.
  - FullyFunctional 6y ago
    I did sink into it for a bit, playing with a matrix of 9 different schemes. However instead of Forth I’d implement Leroy’s ZINC model and implement a simple RPN version of the lambda calculus.
mmphosis 6y ago

dfischer 6y ago

This is exactly the content I’m looking for. Thank you.

globular-toast 6y ago

It's been a while since I read a good book about Lisp. The last one was Let Over Lambda which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll be ordering this one for sure.