Implementing a Lispy Language in Haskell: Part 1

What it does

LISP is widely considered by academic-types as the original basis of good programming language design. It’s deceptively simple – nested expressions that recursively reduce to a value. In my Programming Language Concepts class at RIT, we spent time implementing common algorithms in a LISP-esque language called Impcore, made by Norman Ramsey , as a teaching tool. Impcore, though its syntax is derived from LISP, has very different semantics. I had a lot of fun looking through the Impcore source and textbooks learning the syntax and operational semantics of Impcore. So I decided to implement my own, called Letter, in a language that’s very well suited to recursive data structures: Haskell. Like…from harlanhaskins.com

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