(An ((Even Better) Lisp) Interpreter (in Python))

If you like this sort of thing and want to learn Haskell, consider looking at "Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours"[1]. Of course, writing a Scheme interpreter in Scheme is also classic; SICP[2] is also worth perusing. [1]: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Write_Yourself_a_Scheme_in_48_H... [2]: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Inexplicably, this conversation from earlier today (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745322) hasn't been linked, yet. If you're interested in programming, than I insist you read _Paradigms of Artificial-Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp_ yesterday. That's probably in my top five programming books EVER, and I've read a LOT of programming books. Your brain could gnaw on that sucker for months. Its pseudocode is in Lisp, but it's about real programming - don't write it off as just a lisp book…

I went through this in depth when I spent more time playing at writing a Lisp interpreter. I appreciate that these two features are crucial. 1. In the Python code of the interpreter, "Instead of making a recursive call that returns a value that is then immediately returned again by the caller, we can instead alter the value of x (and sometimes env) in the original invocation of eval(x, env). We are free to do that whenever the old value…

gee-see-c still needed to derive the duck type/nil punning out of the abstract non-sense.