Bootstrapping Lisp in a Boot Sector
github.com104 points by gone35 2 months ago
104 points by gone35 2 months ago
Related:
Sectorlisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34372765 - Jan 2023 (8 comments)
> But without (for example) basic integer/float types and operations. So you can’t do (+ 1 2).
So you cannot do "(+ 1 2)"? It is being compared to Forth, except in Forth you can do "1 2 +", and much more.
While (+ 1 2) doesn't work in the basic system, it is possible to extend it entirely in Lisp so that it does work. You could use Church numerals to represent the numbers, for example. I once did it by representing numbers as lists of hex digits because I was writing a 6809 assembler in Lisp and hex math made it convenient.
damn, pulling off lisp in a boot sector just sounds wild to me, like how much can you actually do with just that tiny space? you think constraints like that push better solutions or just make stuff harder for no reason?
Going by example code[1] and the blog post from the author of the examples[2], both. It makes everything harder, but that does stimulate creativity.
[1]https://github.com/woodrush/sectorlisp-examples/tree/main?ta...
[2]https://woodrush.github.io/blog/posts/2022-01-12-sectorlisp-...