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William Byrd on "The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written" [PWL NYC]

PapersWeLove · talk · Watch on YouTube

Functional programmingCompilers, interpreters & program analysis

What it is

William Byrd presents at Papers We Love NYC on what he calls the most beautiful program ever written, a Lisp interpreter written in Lisp. He walks through the metacircular interpreter and related ideas, and demos relational programming and program synthesis near the end.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN repeatedly recommends it as an amazing talk that derives the essence of Lisp and shows miniKanren-style program synthesis.

  • 11 people recommended it
  • 12 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “There's an amazing talk about it”

    Amazing talk deriving a Lisp interpreter.

    labria, 2019-10 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What is the most beautiful piece of code you've ever read?”

  2. “It is fascinating to think of it as the essence of a language in 13 lines.”

    Derives Lisp's essence in 13 lines.

    BoiledCabbage, 2020-04 · Strong recommendation · in “A Conversation with Alan Kay (2004)”

  3. “One of my all time favorite YouTube videos is a lecture by William Byrd.”

    Fascinating lecture the commenter keeps returning to.

    uptheroots, 2021-06 · Strong recommendation · in “William Byrd on logic and relational programming, miniKanren (2014)”

  4. “I can't recommend the talk Dr Byrd did on this enough”

    Byrd talk on Lisp-in-Lisp program.

    hazbo, 2021-08 · Strong recommendation · in “A Lisp interpreter written in Lisp (2017)”

  5. “It (Barliman) is demoed near the end of this video”

    Demo of Barliman program synthesis editor near the end.

    geogriffin, 2017-10 · Recommendation · in “Near Future of Programming Languages [pdf]”

  6. “Lisp interpreter built from linked-list structures.”

    carapace, 2018-02 · Recommendation · in “Yes, code is data, but that's not what makes Lisp cool”

  7. “More tangential but also cool: this talk[1] by William Byrd”

    Byrd talk on reflective towers and relational programming demo.

    eindiran, 2019-04 · Recommendation · in “Collapsing Towers of Interpreters (2018) [pdf]”

  8. “I watched a fascinating presentation”

    Fascinating presentation showing lambda becoming a lambda symbol while typing.

    m463, 2019-06 · Recommendation · in “The Evolution of Lisp (1993) [pdf]”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: lisp, scheme, minikanren, program synthesis, relational programming, interpreters

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