Programming Should Eat Itself
summary
Argues that interpreters can be stacked and mutated so programs describe and change their own semantics, and demos a reflective language called Black implemented in Scheme with primitives like em and exit. Builds an instrumentation hook that counts applications, compares two Church‑numeral predecessor implementations, and serializes a recursion stack for the Taba pattern; Scheme works but is fiddly, and a typed OCaml version clarifies and partially fixes the portability and debugging problems.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Reflective programming intro
- 2:11Towers of interpreters
- 3:38Demo with Black language
- 8:17Instrumenting meta level
- 16:06Church numerals explored
- 22:22Call stacks in Black
- 27:16Why reflective systems
- 28:38OCaml interpreter towers
- 34:47Opening the floor for questions
