October 26, 2004

Interpreters

• Epiphany moments

  • Recursive calls -- to do something like (+ (+ 1 3) (+ 3 4)), send the args through the eval function. If eval also knows how to do self-evaluating things like "3", it all magically falls out.

  • Doing program design in the same concept space/structural space as the language or code that will eventually define that program tends to have the "*poof* -- Oh hey, it appears as if software just fell directly out of my head" effect.
• Direct relationship between grammar rule and code element handling that rule
• Tree abstraction of Scheme is cool
• Fundamental bits of lisp(minimal set: your underlying hardware/software needs to do at least this, everything else can be built from this set):

  • cons, car, cdr, null?, atom?, eq?

  • if xor cond

  • label

  • lambda

  • quote

For Next Time

Note: We this is a two-week assignment since next tuesday is an Olin Wednedsay

• Assignment is at ProjectAssignment4

• If Prolog is still too uncomfy to do this assignment, do things like, say, list processing -- sorting searching adding deleting pushing popping enqueueing dequeueing etc.

Tell Lynn in advance if your prolog project is something you'd like to share(like, before 11/9)

Tell Lynn in advance if you'd like to do a "5 minutes on *" (like, by next friday)