7 lines of code, 3 minutes: Implement a programming language (2010) | Hacker News
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2 min readKey summary
A Hacker News post argues that lambda calculus can function as a practical programming language under Binary Lambda Calculus conventions.
It highlights a 170-bit self-interpreter, contrasting it with a much larger Scheme interpreter.
The post uses this comparison to show how a minimal formal system can still support general-purpose computation.
The example underscores the theoretical limits of language size and the power of simple input-output conventions.
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