The influence of the designer on the design—J. McCarthy and LISP
Artificial intelligence and mathematical theory of computation
Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I
Communications of the ACM
LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual
Open, extensible composition models
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Free Composition
Open, extensible composition models
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Free Composition
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Simple functional languages like LISP are useful for exploring novel semantics and composition mechanisms. That usefulness can be limited by the assumptions built into the evaluator about the structure of data and the meaning of expressions. These assumptions create difficulties when a program introduces a composition mechanism that differs substantially from the built-in mechanism of function application. We explore how an evaluator can be constructed to eliminate most built-in assumptions about meaning, and show how new composition mechanisms can be introduced easily and seamlessly into the language it evaluates.