The language used in the article had come to quite an elaborate syntax later in the bootstrap cycle ( http://www.meta-alternative.net/pfdoc.pdf http://www.meta-

The language used in the article had come to quite an elaborate syntax later in the bootstrap cycle ( http://www.meta-alternative.net/pfdoc.pdf http://www.meta-alternative.net/pfdoc.pdf ). So, yes, it's a cheating: using a Lisp-like language to bootstrap a compiler for a high level language with a complex parser.