Bel in Clojure (2022)

January 2022 9 months ago, I took a gander at PG’s guide to Bel. If you haven’t read it, here’s the premise: In 1958 when McCarthy invented Lisp, he started with a mathematical, rather than a practical definition. His paper was more similar to the spec for a Turing Machine than a spec for Fortran. For example, McCarthy didn’t even think that Lisp would run on real computers until his graduate student suggested it. This was the secret to Lisp’s power. Because McCarthy was unconcerned with how Lisp would work on the computers of 1958, he made a language so powerful that it’s still magic for the computers of 2021. The original spec for Lisp stopped short of a complete language. There were no numbers or errors for example. So PG thought: what would happen if I continued McCarthy’s tradition, and formally defined a complete language? Numbers, errors, and all. This idea spoke to my Lisper heart, and I was intrigued. I opened up the guide and got reading. An hour in, and I knew I needed ... Read full article.