klisp

an open source interpreter for the Kernel Programming Language.
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Kernel-History.html (3112B)

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     35 
     36 <h3 class="section">1.2 Kernel History</h3>
     37 
     38 <p><a name="index-Kernel-history-1"></a>
     39   The Kernel Programming Language is a work in progress.  It is being
     40 developed by John N. Shutt, Ph.D, who created it while studying at the
     41 Worcester Polytechnic Institute (I think about 2002, or so... ASK).  It
     42 is descended from scheme, with the idea that all objects should be
     43 first class values.  In particular, Kernel replaces macros with
     44 operatives (kinda like statically scoped fexprs and fsubrs) and has
     45 first class environments.  Kernel also has the notion of encapsulated
     46 objects which limits the ammount of information an implementation can
     47 share with a Kernel program (e.g. There is no way in Kernel to get the
     48 parents or a complete list of bindings of an environment object).
     49 
     50 <!-- this is repeated above, in caveats -->
     51    <p>The main reference on Kernel is the preliminary report:
     52 <cite>Revised(-1) Report on the Kernel Programming Language</cite>.  Some
     53 sections of the report are still incomplete, so both klisp and this
     54 manual will use specifications from other languages in these sections,
     55 trying to follow the Kernel spirit.  These instances will be documented
     56 throughout the manual.
     57 
     58    <p>You can read all about Kernel at John's homepage at WPI
     59 <a href="http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/">http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/</a>, including the preliminary report
     60 on the language and his doctoral dissertation which gives a
     61 theorethical frame for fexprs.  You can contact him at
     62 <a href="mailto:jshutt@cs.wpi.edu">jshutt@cs.wpi.edu</a>.
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