Re: is Emacs completely written in lisp

[rustom <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

> > Out of curiosity, can you tell me how? just a general overview or some
> > place where I can read, how this is done?
>
> Here is a readable summary:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisp

Well I looked it up and did not find anything much on the C-lisp
interface. The lisp article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_programming_language
is a bit more detailed.

Anyhow let me try in ever so brief:
We start with some of the most basic editor-y things, say buffers and
windows -- which respectively manipulate and show text.  Now as a C
programmer you will think of this essentially as two types, struct
buffer {...}; and struct window {...}; and along with that an API to
do the things you want to to them.  Now a C++ programmer goes one step
further and binds the the API with the struct (and struts about
calling this an object :-) )
Stallman went one step further and asked What would it take to embed
this API+type fully embedded in its own dedicated language? And you
get elisp.

Well... That emphasised the e part of elisp more than the lisp.  For
the lisp part you should study some of the model scheme
implementations -- a bit different from lisp but better for study.

But before that you will also have to study lisp as a language.  The
bible today is SICP http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
I myself prefer older books like Allens anatomy of lisp and
Henderson's Functional Programming but these are hard to get nowadays.

Last: Dont give up.  The high from lisp cannot be easily replicated.