RE: another take on hackers and painters

[Robby Findler <address@hidden>]

At Fri, 23 May 2003 14:29:26 +0100, "Bayley, Alistair" wrote:
> Sorry to drag the conversation back a couple of days, but can someone please
> tell me what you would use an "eval" function for? What problem might you be
> trying to solve that would be cumbersome in a language without an "eval"?
> 
> (It's not that I don't think it's useful, rather just that I can't think of
> any uses for it.)

PLT (Matthew Flatt, specifically) is working on the idea of a language
as an operating system. In that context, `eval' is a lot like (one
piece of) `fork'. If you're interested to read more, there is an ICFP
paper on the topic:

  http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/201755.html

Robby