Why 'Lisp in Lisp'

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Linguistic abstraction - slide 19 : 22

Why 'Lisp in Lisp'

Why do we study an implementation of Scheme in Scheme?

Motivations:
- To illustrate the idea of linguistic abstraction in Lisp
  - Lisp is both the implementation language and the new language
- To understand the overall principles of interpreters
- To illustrate the use of important Lisp implementation concepts, such as environments
- To provide a playground that provides for easy experimentation with the semantics of Scheme

We will refer to a concrete Scheme implementation from the book 'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (SICP).

SICP: Metalinguistic abstraction