What did Stallman mean in this quote about implementing other languages in Lisp?
- by Charlie Flowers
I just read the following quote from Stallman as part of a speech he gave many years ago. He's talking about how it is feasible to implement other programming languages in Lisp, but not feasible to implement Lisp in those other programming languages.
He seems to take for granted that the listeners/readers understand why. But I don't see why. I think the answer will explain something about Lisp to me, and I'd like to understand it.
Can someone explain it?
Here's the quote:
"There's an interesting benefit you
can get from using such a powerful
language as a version of Lisp as your
primary extensibility language. You
can implement other languages by
translating them into your primary
language. If your primary language is
TCL, you can't very easily implement
Lisp by translating it into TCL. But
if your primary language is Lisp, it's
not that hard to implement other
things by translating them."
The full speech is here: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html
Thanks.