Lets LISP like it's 1959
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 Published On Jan 24, 2019

Kristoffer Gronlund

https://2019.linux.conf.au/schedule/p...

One of my favorite papers in computer science is the original LISP
paper by John McCarthy. Written in 1959, it describes something
mind-bending: The interpreter for a language in the language that it
interprets. If you understand this paper, you understand how
computation works.

A few years ago, I decided to implement the interpreter described in
the paper, and this project turned out to be surprisingly popular. In
this presentation, I'll show how to implement the original LISP
interpreter in C, and together we will marvel at its elegance.

linux.conf.au is a conference about the Linux operating system, and all aspects of the thriving ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software that has grown up around it. Run since 1999, in a different Australian or New Zealand city each year, by a team of local volunteers, LCA invites more than 500 people to learn from the people who shape the future of Open Source. For more information on the conference see https://linux.conf.au/

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