Lisp-in-Charm VS BuildYourOwnLisp

This explanation of how to do it in Python is useful. I used it as a model for doing a Lisp in Charm, though there are differences of detail in the implementation.

I linked to an example of Lisp implemented in Charm. (Compare to Peter Norvig's Lisp implemented in Python, which goes about it a slightly different way but implements the exact same features.)

Here's my own Lisp, in my language. I wonder how many of us have done this.

Then to celebrate I used the strings library to make my implementation of Lisp in Charm shorter: it weighs in at 123 sloc now I don't have to roll my own string functions.

I have dogfooded it by usng it to implement other languages, a Forth, a Z80 emulator, and most recently a Lisp, to prove that it has chops as a GPL.

More dogfooding! Having done all that work to make Charm more useable, I wanted to use some darn Charm. It's pretty nice to code in now, this was not hard to do. Here's the listing.

Build Your Own Lisp

Create your own meta-circular evaluator: https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/

I don't know about C++ but there is this incredible course on C by learning to build your own Lisp. https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/

I find the best way to learn technical topics is to build a simplified version of the thing. The trick is to understand the relationship between the high level components without getting lost in the details. This high level understanding then helps inform you when you drill down into specifics.

I think this book is a shining example of that philosophy: https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/. In the book, you implement an extremely bare-bones version of lisp, but it has been invaluable in my career. I found I was able to understand nuanced language features much more quickly because I have a clear model of how programming languages are decomposed into their components.

If you still want to produce a toy project in C I would suggest to build your own LISP ;-)

If you're after a lisp, MAL on Github (By kanaka) and https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/ are good.

Build your own Lisp is cool but offloads the language grammar and the parsing to the author's mpc library, this is already way overkill for what I'd like to do.

Writing a Lisp - https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/

Lisps are also a good language if you want to know how languages work. They are very easy to make an interpreter for. There are good tutorials for that at https://github.com/kanaka/mal and https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/.

Anyone have any input on:

https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/

It's been in my bookmarks for a long time but I've never really had time to really start it. The "who is this for" page say:

"This book is for anyone wanting to learn C, or who has once wondered how to build their own programming language.".

Well, I'm fairly competent in C (but not great) but would like to get a glimpse of what it's like to build my own language. Is it worth the time?