[HN Gopher] Lisp with GC in 436 Bytes
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       Lisp with GC in 436 Bytes
        
       Author : behnamoh
       Score  : 47 points
       Date   : 2024-08-02 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (justine.lol)
 (TXT) w3m dump (justine.lol)
        
       | IncreasePosts wrote:
       | Why does brainfuck not count as a real language?
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | It's a toy language or esoteric language, designed to just have
         | fun designing weird languages. The point of Brainfuck is to
         | make it difficult to write programs so writing them becomes a
         | "fun" challenge. In contrast Lisp is a real language designed
         | to make writing useful programs easier, and has been used for
         | decades to write real useful programs.
        
           | dixie_land wrote:
           | But brainfuck is Turing complete so you can bootstrap a LISP
           | interpreter from brainfuck, thus making it "real"
        
             | IshKebab wrote:
             | That's really missing the point of this challenge.
        
               | odo1242 wrote:
               | I mean, the Lisp here technically uses the same approach
               | - it runs just enough Lisp to boostrap the remaining
               | functionality on top of what is provided.
        
           | akira2501 wrote:
           | > Lisp is a real language designed to make writing useful
           | programs easier
           | 
           | This implementation is the opposite of this goal. They
           | explicitly eschew this in favor of making something small.
           | So, no error messages, no printer, no macros, none of the
           | things that make lisp "real."
           | 
           | To the extend that BF is not real then this implementation of
           | lisp isn't real either.
        
             | IshKebab wrote:
             | I don't know anything about Lisp really but they claim it
             | can run "real" Lisp, and have a demo. Are you saying this
             | is a lie?
        
               | akira2501 wrote:
               | I challenge the definition of "real" as applied to _this_
               | implementation here.
               | 
               | It can run some programs made only of exceptionally
               | limited forms. You can, of course, build the components
               | like integer addition and subtraction yourself in the
               | least efficient way possible; however, how is this any
               | different from the situation in BF?
               | 
               | They themselves also say this: "The code above is a LISP
               | within a LISP within a LISP: three levels. You can use
               | this technique to implement missing features like
               | macros."
        
               | jart wrote:
               | I demonstrated in the blog post that SectorLISP can run
               | real programs that John McCarthy and his crew wrote back
               | in the 60's for his IBM 703 LISP 1.5 system. See
               | https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/proof.html where, with
               | only light modifications to the original source code, I
               | got his theorem prover working on SectorLISP, which uses
               | Wang's algorithm. The original source code is here for
               | comparison: https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/wang.job.txt
        
               | akira2501 wrote:
               | It was written as an example for the LISP I Programmers
               | Manual. The algorithm itself is not particularly powerful
               | and this implementation can only return a singular true
               | or false value. I wouldn't necessarily call this a "real"
               | program as McCarthy was trying to demonstrate how to
               | translate logical forms into s-expressions more than
               | anything.
               | 
               | I'm not saying any of this to be critical of this team's
               | implementation, more so to defend the notion that
               | brainfuck is just as "real." Or, if brainfuck is "not
               | real" then this particular implementation isn't for more
               | or less the same reasons.
        
         | deciduously wrote:
         | This is a hilarious takeaway from this writeup.
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | Define "real"
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Show HN: Lisp with GC in 436 Bytes_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29630293 - Dec 2021 (131
       | comments)
        
       | sim7c00 wrote:
       | anything on justine.lol makes me feel like a single celled
       | organism. weirdly it feels good. there's so many things in each
       | project, which spirit can be applied to many things. also love
       | the fact always previous projects and code are either used or
       | referenced to explain things. i am only in awe each time
       | something is posted.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | Justne.lol would love "The Computational Beauty of Nature". It
       | has a github repo, with references to Mandelbrot, more fractals,
       | atractors, and, of course, a Lisp and building blocks.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-02 23:01 UTC)