Mal – Make a Lisp • Hacker News Board

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#21

Post by harryvederci » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

progre wrote: post #3

One interesting thing about this project is the extensive use of Make. Not only is the test suite Make based, there is also a Mal implementation in Make

If I recall correctly, the project started as "Make Lisp" (a lisp made with Make), and later changed to "Make A Lisp".

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#22

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

If curious, past threads:

Mal – Make a Lisp, implemented in 79 languages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21670442 - Nov 2019 (11 comments)

Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226110 - Sept 2017 (69 comments)

Mal – Make a Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12720777 - Oct 2016 (1 comment)

Make a Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9121448 - Feb 2015 (41 comments)

Lisp implemented in under 1K of JavaScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9109225 - Feb 2015 (16 comments)

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#23

Post by nicklecompte » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

Y_Y wrote: post #2

Interesting languages that aren't on the list of implementations: APL/J/Kx Verilog Fortran LISP 1.5

I was a bit surprised nobody’s tried a “verified” implementation in something like Coq/Idris/Agda (unless i missed one - I wasn’t familiar with all the languages in the list).

Might be a fun project!

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#24

Post by pygy_ » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

This is unintentional given the history of the name of the project explained in another comment on this page, but "mal" in French means "evil", tying into the famous aphorism.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#25

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #4

I attempted this a few years back, didn't get far before I got hung up on the regular expression(s) required for parsing. Silly to get stopped there, but there was just enough friction between the specified expression, the language I was using (Erlang), and my understanding of the subtleties that I punted. I think with Regex101 in my back pocket I'll give it another try. https://regex101.com

Brown University PLT textbook used lisp/scheme and their first paragraph was something like "nobody cares about parsing, let's get down to business in sexps"

I like parsing, I like regexes but I agree it's often a waste of time :)

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#26

Post by sedachv » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

jmrm wrote: post #11

Y_Y wrote: post #2

Interesting languages that aren't on the list of implementations: APL/J/Kx Verilog Fortran LISP 1.5

Also COBOL and VHDL. I don't know how a hardware description language could implement a Lisp variant btw.

> I don't know how a hardware description language could implement a Lisp variant btw.

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6334

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#27

Post by rbonvall » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #24

This is unintentional given the history of the name of the project explained in another comment on this page, but "mal" in French means "evil", tying into the famous aphorism.

In Spanish it means "badly", which is an encouraging goal to give the project a try :)

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#28

Post by andredz » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

rbonvall wrote: post #27

pygy_ wrote: post #24

This is unintentional given the history of the name of the project explained in another comment on this page, but "mal" in French means "evil", tying into the famous aphorism.

In Spanish it means "badly", which is an encouraging goal to give the project a try :)

In Spanish it also means evil.

Example: No seas vencido por el mal, sino vence con el bien el mal.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#29

Post by diego898 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

Michael Nielsen's "Lisp as the Maxwell’s equations of software" [1] was my first exposure to this in python, and I highly recommend it!

[1]: https://michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equation...

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp

#30

Post by User23 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

duncaen wrote: post #5

macintux wrote: post #4

I attempted this a few years back, didn't get far before I got hung up on the regular expression(s) required for parsing. Silly to get stopped there, but there was just enough friction between the specified expression, the language I was using (Erlang), and my understanding of the subtleties that I punted. I think with Regex101 in my back pocket I'll give it another try. https://regex101.com

Regex to parse lisp expressions?

Yeah little weird since regexes can’t parse context free languages. I suppose most so-called regexes aren’t actually regular expressions, but it still feels like driving screws with a hammer.