3 ms·
Perhaps my favorite thing in all of computing is the authors of Lisp bootstrapping by writing an (academic) interpreter for Lisp in Lisp, and then realizing the
by plagiarist 3y ago
Perhaps my favorite thing in all of computing is the authors of Lisp bootstrapping by writing an (academic) interpreter for Lisp in Lisp, and then realizing they could just compile that by hand.
- paddy_m 3y agoPaper? I once read a lisp paper that kept defining lisp primitives in terms of simpler lisp primitives until they had only 4-10 primitives. Then the paper started defining those in terms of assembly language (but with parens). In the final step, they just removed the parens. It was so elegant. I can't find the paper though :( Any ideas?
- aap_ 3y agoThe paper is the original paper on LISP by McCarthy "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I". It has the original definition of LISP in LISP.