Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

This site reckons there are 10: http://hyperpolyglot.wikidot.com/lisp#ten-primitives

Steve Yegge said there were seven (or five):

McCarthy had five.

On an x86 architecture - you can do it with one.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3482389/how-many-primiti...




I had imagined this was merely theoretical, but learned that there are computers implemented with a single instruction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-instruction_set_computer#M...

https://esolangs.org/wiki/OISC


In the functional realm which LISP inhabits, two combinators suffice: S and K.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus


in the context of S and K, lisp is not functional


I don't think movfuscator proves you only need one lisp primitive. Just that any language can be evaluated using mov's many variant forms.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: