Semantic Extensibility with Vau

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John Shutt has reformulated the foundations of LISP/Scheme [1]. Observing that Lambda is a primitive applicative constructor, he proposes Vau as a primitve operative constructor instead. This changes our focus from implicit evaluation to explicit evaluation. Applicatives evaluate their operands before evaluating the combination. Operatives act directly on their (unevaluated) operands, possibly evaluating them selectively. […]

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Fexpr the Ultimate Lambda

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This article is dedicated to the memory of John McCarthy (1927–2011) We are constantly on a quest for the elegant combination of simplicity and expressiveness in computer languages—what Alan Kay calls the “Maxwell’s Equations of Software“. An important early milestone was John McCarthy’s LISP [1] (The evolution of these ideas and the thinking behind them […]

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