Lisp, the machine language. Was Re: Hallelujah!

From: Buck Savage <hhacker_at_home.com>
Date: Sun Apr 4 00:58:48 1999

It is interesting to me that others view Lisp as a high level language. For
my money, it is an assembly language for an abstract computer. Sure, it
has much of the form of a high level language but, the simplicity of its
minimal number of required operators makes it ideal as a machine
language. As I recall, CAR, CDR, CONS, and four or five more operators
is all that is necessary for a complete implementation. This is RISC
processing if ever there is such a thing. Moreover, the fact that all
things
are handled as a single data type sure does imply an object point of
view, however much that point of view is myopically constrained (that
the objects are all lists!).

The most interesting aspect of Lisp, for me, is that code can be
constructed by the operation of a program, and thereupon caused to
be executed. This is another parallel with machine languages.

William R. Buckley
Received on Sun Apr 04 1999 - 00:58:48 BST