Don't Build Your Own Lisp

ColinWright

Is it too much to ask that when giving a book review, a link to the actual book title, and possibly a listing on a website, should be prominently given?

mghackerlady

What if its really fun though

kjs3

I feel like third or so of this critique could be subtitled "have I mentioned that I don't like C?".

quibono

Well there's Make a Lisp [0]. And Lispy [1] and Lispy2 and Lisp.py [3]. [0] https://github.com/kanaka/mal [1] https://norvig.com/lispy.html [2] https://norvig.com/lispy2.html [3] https://khamidou.com/compilers/lisp.py

turbostar

I think I’ll make a Lisp that fits in just a single sector of a floppy disk. Oh wait …

throwaway81523

I wrote a Lisp in C and it worked out fine. It was pretty slow but had precise GC and was easy to extend. It was embedded in a commercial product that did ok. I don't remember whether that was before or after I started absent-mindedly writing yet a different Lisp in C while hanging around RMS. He looked over my shoulder and asked what I was doing. I said writing a Lisp. He asked why I was doing that and I said everybody ought to write a Lisp. He thought about that for a few seconds, said "you should write it in assembler", and walked away. The "Don't build your own Lisp" article seems reasonable to me and the book it negatively reviews ("Build your own Lisp", I guess) does sound bad.

reitzensteinm

The dig at Kernel is kind of depressing. It's probably an evolutionary dead end, but god damn it, the world is better when people try things. Dismissing them doesn't make you cool.