Tarpits & Abstraction

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Tarpits & Abstraction explores the abstraction of computation, from its rudiments in the Lambda Calculus to a full-fledged Lisp with mutation and all. After defining a subset of Lisp in terms of the Lambda Calculus, procedures are then designed, simulators implemented, and interpreters programmed until, finally, a bootstrapped interpreter is defined on the Lisp. Once the language can interpret itself, the syntax and semantics can be expanded to fit new approaches to programming.

The book is broken down into the following sections.

1. Computation - A Grammar and Data Structures
2. Primitive Procedures - Building Blocks for Programs
3. Simulating Logical Devices - Representation of Objects and Rules in FP
4. Interpreting a Language - Evaluating and Parsing
5. A Self-Hosted Language - Bootstrapping and Extending Our Language's Grammar