Dick Gabriel on Lisp

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In the podcast titled "Dick Gabriel on Lisp" by Software Engineering Radio, the guest, Richard P. Gabriel, talks about the characteristics and capabilities of Lisp. An important approach is given to artificial intelligence as the historical context of Lisp.

Dick Gabriel does a very good job talking about Lisp, Why? Well, he is a computer scientist, he has degrees in mathematics and artificial intelligence, he has a Lisp company and he also writes poetry!

Lisp was one of the earliest functional languages, the computation is done by nesting functions. I agree with Gabriel when he says that it is very interesting, to be able to write Lisp programs using Lisp programs. In other words, the interesting thing is that functions are data and the data can be functions.

People who work with artificial intelligence (AI) try to write programs that no one knows how to write, Gabriel thinks that it is the grand goal of Lisp. The language uses a metacircular interpreter, this means that the compiler is written in the same language of the program that is interpreted. Thanks, Eval function!

Gabriel also talks about macros, that is, the code that produces the expression you want, using macros can extend the language. Although I do not know how macros work, I can say that it is one of the most interesting features of Lisp.
 
Again I find the same opinion: Lisp offers the possibility of creating a different and competitive company. Listening to Dick Gabriel to talk about the capabilities and features of Lisp, makes me think that this is true.

This podcast was very interesting and it made me learn more about Lisp, I loved how the speaker combines Lisp with poetry, as an artistic, creative question, which is done with passion. Oh! and that song at the end is just amazing.


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