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Re:Peano arithmetic is enough, because Peano arithmetic enc... by anthk on Saturday June 14, 2025 @05:33AM (#44275289)
Boot sector Lisp bootstraps itself.

https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/

Also, lots of Lisp from https://t3x.org implement numerals (and the rest of stuff) from cons cells and apply/eval:

'John McCarthy discovered an elegant self-defining way to compute the above steps, more commonly known as the metacircular evaluator. Alan Kay once described this code as the "Maxwell's equations of software". Here are those equations as implemented by SectorLISP:

ASSOC EVAL EVCON APPLY EVLIS PAIRLIS '

Ditto with some Forths.

Back to T3X, he author has Zenlisp where the meta-circular evaluation it's basically how to define eval/apply and how to they ared called between themselves in a recursive way.

http://t3x.org/zsp/index.html

Re:Peano arithmetic is enough, because Peano arithmetic enc... by btilly on Saturday June 14, 2025 @01:37PM (#44277644)
I knew that this sort of stuff was possible, but it is fun to see it.

When it comes to bootstrapping a programming language from nothing, the two best options are Lisp and Forth. Of the two, I find Lisp easier to understand.