onlyafly / lisp-bibliography

A bibliography of reading material on Lisps (Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, etc.) and related research

A Lisp Bibliography

by Kevin Albrecht

A bibliography of reading material on Lisps (Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, etc.) and related research. Sometimes only quite vaguely related...

I prefer resources that are broadly applicable over ones that are highly specific, which means that I am heavy on things that teach you ideas and concepts over technologies. Technologies are transitory, while concepts will be with you forever.

Table of Contents

• A Lisp Bibliography
  • Table of Contents
  • Grading Key
  • Todo
• Meta Lists
• In Defense of Programming Languages
• Monads
• Concurrency
  • Multiversion Concurrency Control / Transactional Memory
  • Communicating Sequential Processes
• Lisp Implementation
  • Metacircular Interpreters
  • Macro Implementation
    • First-Class Macros
    • Hygiene in Macros
    • Macros - Other
  • Compilation
    • Compiling to C-like
    • Implementing Tail Recursion
    • Implementing call/cc
  • Typing

Note: Table of contents generated by Atom's markdown-toc package. Will automatically update on save if the package is installed.

Grading Key

• 3 - Must read for all developers.
• 2 - Every developer interested in the topic should see/read it.
• 1 - Could be useful for developers interested in the topic.

Todo

• Move relevant content from here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A0EVj7f4DUTjbFs4OLqkPJe-WZKG-NvIn5CTgc2F1lI/edit?hl=sv#heading=h.t43faihoaeuo

Meta Lists

• Matt Might's Articles on Scheme, Lisp, etc
• Clojure the Next Level
• Rich Hickey’s Greatest Hits
  • The greatest videos from Rich Hickey, creator or Clojure and all-around programmer-philosopher.
• Free Programming Books
  • List of legal and free programming books.
• Papers We Love
  • Repository of academic computer science papers and a community who loves reading them.
• JS Must Watch
  • Curated list of the best JS videos over the years.
• Read Scheme: Bibliography of Scheme-related Research

In Defense of Programming Languages

• "Why Does The World Need More Programming Languages?" by Chris Dannen
• "The Hundred-Year Language" by Paul Graham
• "Why we need even more programming languages" By Neil McAllister
  • Upgrading existing, popular languages to support new features is a lot harder than you might think

Lambda Calculus

• "Programming Language Theory and its Implementation" by Michael J C Gordon (PDF) or (Amazon)
  • An interesting and thorough overview of the Lambda Calculus. See Section II, Chapters 4-8.

Monads

• "Why a Monad Is Like a Writing Desk"

Concurrency

Multiversion Concurrency Control / Transactional Memory

• "Are We There Yet?" by Rich Hickey (Presentation) -- 3/3
  • Philosophical discussion of identity/state/time, and a practical discussion on MVCC and STM.

Communicating Sequential Processes

• "Communicating Sequential Processes (Wikipedia)"

Lisps that are influenced by CSP:

• Clojure's core.async:
  • https://github.com/clojure/core.async/
  • Rich Hickey on core.async: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/clojure-core-async
  • http://swannodette.github.io/2013/07/12/communicating-sequential-processes/

Go's Concurrency Patterns:

• http://blog.golang.org/share-memory-by-communicating
• http://blog.golang.org/go-concurrency-patterns-timing-out-and
• http://blog.golang.org/pipelines
• http://blog.golang.org/context

Lisp Implementation

• "Implementing Lisp" at c2.com
• "Three Implementation Models for Scheme" by R. Kent Dybvig (pdf)
  • Describes two interesting interpreters/compilers: the heap based model is the easiest to implement, but the stack based is more efficient. Cover

Metacircular Interpreters

• "A Micro-Manual for Lisp - Not the Whole Truth" by John McCarthy (pdf)
  • Two page paper describing a "complete" Lisp interpreter for a pure Lisp.
• "Lisp in Small Pieces" by Christian Queinnec (Amazon)
  • The ultimate guide to metacircular interpreters, and compilers.
• “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” (web, video lectures, Kindle)

Macro Implementation

First-Class Macros

• "First-Class Macros" by Matt Might
  • Comprehensive explanation of first-class macros and their effect on the implementation of the interpreter, with special emphasis on a metacircular interpreters.

Hygiene in Macros

• "Clojure and Hygienic Macros" by Marek Kubica
  • Explanation of how Clojure handles hygiene in its macros through namespacing.

Macros - Other

• "Scheme from Scratch" by Peter Michaux: http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch-introduction

Compilation

Compiling to C-like

• Chicken Scheme
• Clojure???
• http://matt.might.net/articles/compiling-scheme-to-c/

Implementing Tail Call Optimization

• "A little bit of CPS, a few thunks, and a trampoline" by Chris Frisz (Video): http://www.chrisfrisz.com/slides/clojure-tco.pdf
  • Short presentation on how TCO was implemented on top of Clojure
• "CONS Should Not CONS Its Arguments, Part II: Cheney on the M.T.A." by Henry Baker: http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/CheneyMTA.html
  • Describes a technique to implement full tail recursion when compiling from Scheme into C.
• The Scheme2JS compiler and especially its trampoline implementation has been presented: http://www-sop.inria.fr/indes/scheme2js/files/tfp2007.pdf
• "The 90 Minute Scheme to C compiler" by Marc Feeley: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~boucherd/mslug/meetings/20041020/minutes-en.html
  • Supports fully optimized proper tail calls, continuations, and (of course) full closures, using two important compilation techniques for functional languages: closure conversion and CPS-conversion
• http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/papers/3imp.pdf

Implementing Continuations

• "Implementation Strategies for First-Class Continuations" by William D. Clinger, Anne H. Hartheimer, Eric M. Ost
• Description of Scheme2Js's call/cc implementation

Also referenced elsewhere in this bibliography

• "Three Implementation Models for Scheme" by R. Kent Dybvig
• Chapter 3 of "Lisp in Small Pieces" by Christian Queinnec

Typing

• http://docs.racket-lang.org/ts-guide/