Zero To Lisp In 60-ish Minutes

We live in an era of highly-optimized, complex virtual machine environments. Without taking all of this for granted, it can be instructive to return to the roots of modern Computer Science to get some insight into the technology we use every day. The goal of this talk is to discuss one of those building blocks (the Lisp family of languages) and construct a *very* simple Scheme interpreter over the course of the session, leveraging a series of accessible essays authored by Peter Norvig. This presentation also serves as an introduction to the novel, foundational concepts of the Lisp branch of computer languages and how they influence the modern programming language landscape. Interestingly, you can build a simple Scheme interpreter in just about any language, so programmers from any particular environment/platform are more than welcome to attend.

• Jeffery Olson

  1 Recording

  Jeff Olson is a programmer who, like many others, writes code because it's what he loves. He is currently a consultant with Improving Enterprises in beautiful Houston, TX. He has been involved in the Rust community since shortly after the 0.1 release in early 2012. He is recognized by Mozilla as a "Friend-of-the-tree", a distinction reserved for community members who've made significant contributions to the growth of the Rust language. He is also involved in full-stack C# development, as well as rich client-side experiences in HTML5+JavaScript.

• Houston Techfest 118 Recordings

• Lisp 1 Recording