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A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life (2021)

104 points by pabs3

by Xmd5a

0 subcomment

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/algorithmic-informa...
I - Formalisms for Computation: Register Machines, Exponential Diophantine Equations, & Pure LISP
Gregory. J. Chaitin
> And in Chapter 4 we present a register machine interpreter for this LISP, and then compile it into a diophantine equation.

by qubex

0 subcomment

Being somebody whose absolute favourite book is The Computational Beauty of Nature by Gary William Flake (1998), this is the kind of stuff I come here for. So much more interesting than shop talk about the framework of the week, blockchain hype segueing into AI frenzy, and making fun of people who get stuck in VIM (I once got stuck in nano when for some reason the Control key became unmapped for unknown reasons eventually solved by spawning a new shell, killing the killalling the process, and resetting the terminal, so yeah — I might be an old hand but making fun of people is so not funny).
I’m glad the real hacker ethos of making stuff arbitrarily convoluted by mixing and matching various computational-equivalent substrates results is some truly bizarre results. An instant classic of the genre.

by forgotpwd16

1 subcomments

Since although details given, it isn't explicitly stated, ELVM is an infrastructure with an 8cc front-end, a simple IR, and multiple target back-ends which, alongside others, include QFTASM, that article is about, brainfuck, and lambda / binary lambda calculus. Essentially you can write code in C and have it compiled to bunch of weird targets.
Mentioning the last one (same model, different encoding basically) because that guy (@woodrush*) also made a Lisp to λ-calculus expressions compiler which then used to make a Lisp interpreter expressed in λ-calculus (which can evaluate aforementioned compiler and also has an a λ-calculus interpreter implementation available**) and a VM for a Lisp/ELVM-like assembly. The λ ELVM backend was made possible integrating this VM in ELVM. And, of course using his own contributed backend, had an 8cc-based C compiler expressed in λ-calculus.
*If want a drink game to get drunk asap, "take a shot for every λ" in @woodrush Lambda projects is a strong option.
**For extra inception points, can use it to run 2012 Tromp's λ self-interpreter.

by dang

0 subcomment

Related. Others?
A Lisp interpreter implemented in Conway's Game of Life (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34266240 - Jan 2023 (25 comments)
A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661616 - Dec 2021 (85 comments)

by anthk

0 subcomment

I'd love a Lisp written for a 16 bit SUBLEQ interpreter. There's OFC EForth, but we have no Lisp.
https://github.com/howerj/subleq
Same, but with instruction multiplexing.
https://github.com/howerj/muxleq