Dick Gabriel Podcast

This podcast is about an interview to Dick Gabriel, where he started talking on functional languages and defining them like this to all the languages that take arguments and return values, and they can be used in other functions. I didn´t know that they are called like that because of this.

Before this interview, I didn´t know that Lisp was too old, it has been used since 1958. Other important point on this interview was the fact that Lisp can be used to build AI software with its meta-programming and it´s meta-circularity.

Something that get out of my mind was the fact that Lisp´s interpreter was implemented in just one single night, using fifteen lines of code (Eval). Also, I learned that a metacircular interpreter is an interpreter or compiler written in same language of the program that is going to be interpreted, so it interprets itself. Also, I learned that Eval is a Universal Machine that runs lists.

I like how Dick talks about macros, because is too understandable and he teach us that is a Lisp code that produces the expression we want, and they are a string type of operation. This makes it the best and powerful attribute of Lisp language.

Before this class I didn’t know about Lisp at all, and know I know that Lisp has different dialects, in other way they are variations of Lisp language. This Variations are Scheme, Common Lisp, MacLisp, InterLisp, etc. In this interview the most used is Scheme because we understand that was the most used and popular because the side effects of it´s functions weren´t as severe as in Common Lisp.

This was an interesting interview that help me to know more about Lisp and its different dialects and advantages between them, also it helps me to know about Lisp story.