Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition
The "Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition" book offers a deep dive into the foundational elegance of Lisp, exploring its minimal self-interpreting and self-compiling forms. It juxtaposes modern implementations with reflections on early Lisp hacking and its ties to Lambda Calculus. This blend of historical context, theoretical rigor, and practical code examples makes it a compelling read for Hacker News's technically curious and nostalgically inclined audience.
The Lowdown
The Hacker News community is abuzz with "Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition," a book by Nils M. Holm that meticulously explores the core principles of the Lisp programming language. Published by Lulu Press, this text delves into the philosophical and practical aspects of building minimal, self-contained Lisp systems.
- The book tackles fundamental questions, such as identifying the minimal Lisp language capable of interpreting itself and the smallest Lisp that can compile itself.
- It provides practical implementations ranging from a simple metacircular evaluator to a full compiler that generates a single, self-contained C program.
- Beyond the code, the text offers historical insights into what Lisp hacking was like in the era of punch cards, teletypes, and mainframe computers.
- The second edition significantly enhances the content with a new chapter dedicated to the relationship between Lisp and Lambda Calculus.
- It also introduces quasiquotation within the macros section and includes various prose improvements and corrections from the first edition.
- Readers can access a wealth of accompanying code, including metacircular Lisp interpreters in Common Lisp and Scheme, a self-hosting Lisp compiler, and a garbage collector implementation, all available for download.
- For a touch of historical whimsy, the author even provides a Postscript-based punch card generator.
"Lisp from Nothing" serves as an essential resource for anyone interested in the foundational design of programming languages, particularly Lisp, offering both theoretical depth and practical examples, steeped in a rich historical context.