The title "Lisp from nothing" doesn't seem to fit with: "INTENDED AUDIENCE This is not an introduction to LISP." on page 10.
Nothing as in "from scratch", as opposed to Nothing as in "Visual Basic's NULL".
Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
31–40 of 109 posts
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#32Related:
Lisp from Nothing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24809293 - Oct 2020 (29 comments)
Lisp from Nothing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798941 - Oct 2020 (5 comments)
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#33Has anyone here read his “Practical Compiler Construction”? It’s on of the shorter compiler books Ive seen, seems like it might be a good way to learn a bit more about assembly
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#34The book looks awesome. However, I find some irony in the presence of a “no AI” badge on the back cover considering Lisp was AI research.
I read it as "no Gen AI" was used to write this book.
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have been many attempts to get rid of sexprs in favor of a “better” syntax. Even John McCarthy, the inventor (discoverer?) of Lisp had plans for an “M-expression” syntax to replace “S-expressions.” It never happened. The secret is that Lispers actually view sexprs as an advantage, not something to be worked around. Once you discover symbolic editing and code manipulation based on sexprs, you’ll never go back to…
I actually really appreciate Racket's judicious use of square brackets in let expressions. It just makes visual parsing that much easier.
Exactly. I also like Clojure’s use of square brackets for vectors and curly braces for maps. It eliminates all the “vector-” and “map-” function calls.
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#36Looks awesome. Just ordered a copy. I'm just now picking up Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp again and taking another stab at immersing myself in the world of Lisp. So this is perhaps fortuitous timing.
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#37I love Lisp (I'm an Emacs user and often write in Racket for personal projects) but the one thing I never understood about the Lisp community is the emphasis placed on metacircular evaluators.
I sure find them beautiful and all, but why do they take center stage so often? Beside the aesthetics and instructional value, I don't get the appeal. Also I feel that a bunch of the heavy lifting behind metacircular evaluators is actually done by the Polish notation syntax as well as the actual implementation, and these concepts don't get nearly as much love.
Any Lisper who can illuminate me?
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#38I love Lisp (I'm an Emacs user and often write in Racket for personal projects) but the one thing I never understood about the Lisp community is the emphasis placed on metacircular evaluators. I sure find them beautiful and all, but why do they take center stage so often? Beside the aesthetics and instructional value, I don't get the appeal. Also I feel that a bunch of the heavy lifting behind metacircular evaluators…
Long time lisper. It just doesn’t feel right unless your language can compile your language. It’s like wearing someone else’s underwear.
Re: Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
#39"... and the chicks for free "?
I have listened to that song probably 100s of times and always heard "checks," so I just learned something new about that song. Thanks.
Maybe less embarrassing than talking about Rock the Cashbar by The Clash (though that one was corrected the first time I saw the back of the album).