The Eric Normand Podcast Do we use metacircular evaluators in real life?
Oct 19, 2020
Explore the fascinating world of metacircular evaluators and their significance in programming. Discover how they function in the Scheme language, particularly in mutual recursion during evaluation. The discussion highlights practical applications, drawing parallels with contemporary programming practices. You'll gain insights into how these concepts shape modern software development.
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Metacircular Evaluators in the Real World?
- A listener questioned the real-world use of metacircular evaluators outside of academic texts.
- This prompted Eric Normand to explain the concept and its application in SICP.
Purpose of Metacircular Evaluators
- SICP implements a Scheme interpreter in Scheme to explore programming language semantics and the self-defining nature of Lisp.
- This allows for modifying Scheme's semantics, like changing call-by-value to call-by-name.
Misnomer: Metacircular Evaluator
- The "metacircular evaluator" is a misnomer; it doesn't mean the interpreter is written in the same language.
- It refers to the mutual recursion between the
evalandapplyfunctions.
