I wrote my first Lisp in C++

github.com

4 points·elricmann··7 comments

It barely works (supports a few forms) but I wanted to familiarize myself with Lisp-flavored languages and C++ (coming from other languages). My goal was to make it a dual-mode interpreter/compiler that might target Java class files although guides out there are either Java-specific (e.g. OpenJDK rec's ASM disassembly tools) or are from a non-JNI perspective. I hope to improve this but feel like sharing my progress so far, still got a lot to learn, esp. regarding general bytecode formats.

Personally I am impressed with Clojure as a recent Lisp. Lately I've been reading Graham's On Lisp on the bus. I am greatly enjoying it but for some examples I'm also finding myself being super-critical about the details such as the paragraph that is duplicated here, the cringey example there, etc. (I badly want to edit it: I think it is 98% good but I want to clean up that last 2%!)

One of my nits was "he started using nconc without defining it" and pretty soon he is showing how much you can struggle with using destructive operators in functions, macros, etc. Which made me think: if he was using Clojure he wouldn't be struggling with nconc!

with Clojure he would have to write it in Java...

Personally I’d rather write assembly than C. Or make “clojure but for .NET/mono”, or…

Paul Graham himself proved with arc that you can write another Lisp in C and have it be a great foundation for a single application without doing anything really interesting in a wider sense (See also emacs lisp)

Arc was written in Racket.

I stand corrected.

Clojure is certainly a hallmark among lisps, although it's rather complete. I would've expected it be on par with Lua esp. in scripting games. On a side note, great insight.

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