A while back, whilst surfing the web...
I came across a lovely description of how lisp
came to be implemented. It was something
along the lines of
"we were writing the spec, and
we'd spec'd eval and realised if we altered a coupla'
things eval *WAS* the interpreter, and someone
coded eval (in native assembler) overnight
and we had LISP."
Which was claimed to be a pity
since it de-facto set the spec in stone.
I was telling someone at work this, and they asked
for the original reference.
And I can't find it.
Help?
BugBear.
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Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Try:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/lisp.html
The exact anecdote you're looking for is at:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node3.html