[This essay is a set of thoughts for an upcoming Jam. In the end, I worked on something else.]

Secrets of Sector Lisp vs Wheel Reinvention Jam

  • Goal: understand the secrets of Sector Lisp
  • Implementing: implement SL as an embedded language (for C++?)
  • Collaborators: open,

Discussion

  • Sector Lisp
    • the whole language fits in under 512 bytes
      • [sic] bytes, not K, not M, not G
    • Garbage Collection in 40 bytes
      • how is this possible?
    • J. Tunney created this version of GC
      • this GC is not McCarthy’s original GC
    • after 50-70 years of banging our heads on programming fads, Sector Lisp (based on McCarthy’s original Lisp) is Orders of Magnitude smaller than any programming language
      - why?
      - I believe that this smallness cannot be attributed only to assembler tricks, there must be something deeper at work
      - what is this “Je ne sais quoi”?
      - can we apply these secrets to other programs and programming languages?
      - will this lead to a better understanding of the reasons for “code bloat”?
    • create Sector Lisp implemented in Ohm-JS
      • transpile SL to SL
      • transpile SL to C/C++
      • ostensibly: create a Sector Lisp Embeddable Language
    • changing our mind: we will follow the path of least resistance, wherever that takes us
    • taste: previous notes [TBD]
    • collaborators:
      • no experience necessary
      • I hope to impart how to use Ohm-JS to collaborators
        • thinking “macros” instead of “compilers”
        • toolbox languages, don’t re-invent compilation, use existing compilers to do the heavy lifting
        • YAGNI approach to programming
      • SL is quite simple
        • implementing SL should take only a few hours,
        • but, understanding why SL is small might take longer, I dunno
    • First Principles Thinking
      • https://fs.blog/first-principles/
      • what first principles are at work here?

        Appendix - See Also

References

https://guitarvydas.github.io/2004/01/06/References.html

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