Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition

LISP FROM NOTHING Lulu Press, 2025 – 344 pages – 19 figures – 6" x 9" format – free code Order paperback book at Lulu.com Order hardcover book at Lulu.com * Order PDF copy at Lulu.com Get the source code from the book Read a few pages (PDF) Errata (First Edition) Watch Nino Ivanov's Review on Youtube What is the minimal LISP language that can interpret itself? What is the smallest LISP that can compile itself? What was LISP hacking like in the age of punch cards, teletypes, and mainframe computers? How is LISP related to Lambda Calculus? This text plays with the theme of minimal LISP by providing several implementations from a simple metacircular evaluator to a full compiler that emits a single, self-contained C program. The discussion is embedded in reflections on what hacking looked like in the early days of LISP. The second edition adds a chapter on the relationship between LISP and Lambda Calculus, introduces quasiquotation in the section about macros, fixes various small typos and mistakes, and smoothes out some of the prose. Some code from the book: Or, get the complete LISP code from the book (zip, ~100KB) and the Scheme code from the chapter on lambda calculus (zip, ~6KB) Or, get a punch card generator in Postscript so you can create your own punch card images, like those in the book! Or, download the artwork from the title page of the first chapter ("Let There Be LISP") as a Postscript file. * The hardcover edition of LISP from Nothing is not available in retail shops.