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Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

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Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#31

Post by kanaka »

faaq wrote: post #29

What is the smallest Mal implementation? OCalm?

Implementation size is hard to compare accurately across languages (bytes? lines of code? exclude comments? excluding leading spaces?). Also, the mal implementations were created by many different people so individual style plays a large role in concision/verbosity.

However, that being said, the following implementations are "smallish" (in both lines of code and bytes): mal itself (self-hosted), Clojure, factor, Perl 6, Ruby. The following are "largish": Awk, PL-pgSQL, C, PL-SQL, Chuck, Swift 2, Ada.

OCaml is in the "smallest" third of the implementations.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#32

Post by flavio81 »

rjsw wrote: post #20
chriswarbo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, why don't we replace high school math tests with one question: "Solve the Riemann hypothesis". We can replace the physics curriculum with "Unify quantum mechanics with general relativity", and throw out computing courses in favour of "Prove whether or not P = NP". It's important to re-do things which others have already worked out, in order to reach a greater understanding :)

Whatever. I learned how to implement Lisp by reading the source code for multiple compilers. Started with Franz Lisp, then KCL and CMUCL. I don't feel that a toy interpreter is going to teach the same things.

Your approach is 100% valid, but it can't hurt to start making a really small lisp. Of course the implementation strategies of a "MAL" lisp and a Real Lisp are entirely different.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#33

Post by mouldysammich »

sassy_samurai wrote: post #25

There is a similar project called "Build Your Own Lisp"[0] (BYOL), which is a book that walks one through making a Lisp in C. Has anybody here done BYOL? How does it compare to MAL? If you had to choose one to learn how to create a Lisp, which would you choose? [0]: http://www.buildyourownlisp.com/

I used build your own lisp to learn C (along with other stuff) I liked it, except I dont think its the best way to learn to develop languages.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#34

Post by Sjenk »

I am curious why is hackernews always so happy and obsessed with lisp, there is almost daily a lisp post on the frontpage. I dont really care/mind but I am just curious as why people love lisp so much. The only thing that I notice about Lisp are the bracket jokes and memes.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#35

Post by kanaka »

ertucetin wrote: post #5

Why?

It started with the question "Could you implement a Lisp using just GNU Make macros"? (Hint: Yes) Bit of trivia: Mal originally stood for MAke-Lisp. Conveniently the acronym didn't need to be changed for "Make-A-Lisp"

It then grew into a personal learning tool for me for learning new languages. As I implemented more languages, I refactored the structure to make it more portable and incremental. At some point I realized that it might be an interesting learning tool for others so I wrote an early version of the guide and had a friend work through it and give feedback. He liked it enough that he immediately did a second implementation.

At some point the project got some twitter/HN attention and other people began contributing implementations and feedback for the guide.

Mal also serves as programming language "Rosetta Stone". A bit like rosettacode.org but using a full working project.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#36

Post by kovrik »

Sjenk wrote: post #34

I am curious why is hackernews always so happy and obsessed with lisp, there is almost daily a lisp post on the frontpage. I dont really care/mind but I am just curious as why people love lisp so much. The only thing that I notice about Lisp are the bracket jokes and memes.

Because lisps are unique and cool. Really, they are quite special.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#37

Post by munificent »

rjsw wrote: post #20
chriswarbo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, why don't we replace high school math tests with one question: "Solve the Riemann hypothesis". We can replace the physics curriculum with "Unify quantum mechanics with general relativity", and throw out computing courses in favour of "Prove whether or not P = NP". It's important to re-do things which others have already worked out, in order to reach a greater understanding :)

Whatever. I learned how to implement Lisp by reading the source code for multiple compilers. Started with Franz Lisp, then KCL and CMUCL. I don't feel that a toy interpreter is going to teach the same things.

Other people have different preferred learning styles.

A toy language won't teach the exact same things, but it covers a lot of the same topics.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#38

Post by tombert »

Sjenk wrote: post #34

I am curious why is hackernews always so happy and obsessed with lisp, there is almost daily a lisp post on the frontpage. I dont really care/mind but I am just curious as why people love lisp so much. The only thing that I notice about Lisp are the bracket jokes and memes.

Lisp is one of those languages that, once I learned it (Clojure in my case), I started wondering why every language wasn't more like it. Once you get used to the parentheses and whatnot, it's actually an incredibly beautiful language that gives you the ability to augment the language without waiting for updates via its elegant macro system.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#39

Post by jdmoreira »

Sjenk wrote: post #34

I am curious why is hackernews always so happy and obsessed with lisp, there is almost daily a lisp post on the frontpage. I dont really care/mind but I am just curious as why people love lisp so much. The only thing that I notice about Lisp are the bracket jokes and memes.

Lisps have properties that are not so common in other languages:

- Homoiconicity: Code and data are the same (s-expressions)

- Lisp code is basically the AST in itself

- It's trivial to implement lisp in lisp (eval)

- Continuations (call/cc)

- Macros

- etc...

It's a truly fascinating language. I never really did any Lisp coding outside some university projects and I still obsess and read about Scheme all the time.

Re: Mal – Make a Lisp, in 68 languages

#40

Post by metaobject »

Sjenk wrote: post #34

I am curious why is hackernews always so happy and obsessed with lisp, there is almost daily a lisp post on the frontpage. I dont really care/mind but I am just curious as why people love lisp so much. The only thing that I notice about Lisp are the bracket jokes and memes.

Paul Graham and Robert Morris built one of the first web applications (that's a PG claim, btw) that allowed users to build their own, separate websites that had shopping carts, custom UI, etc.

They wrote the app in Common Lisp and claimed that it was their secret weapon which allowed them to iterate faster and stay ahead of their competition. They ended up selling their company (ViaWeb) to Yahoo for $50 million (IIRC).

PG also authored two books on Lisp, and HN is written in Arc (a Lisp built on top of Racket).

Around 2005 I was doing a lot of Lisp programming and I was really interested in what PG had to say. He was writing a lot of essays then and giving lots of talks, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't get the opportunity to use Lisp as much as I used to, but I'm doing a lot of Python and even played around with Hy (Lisp on top of Python). So I'm interested in Lisp as I find it to be an incredibly powerful language that is really fun to use.

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