Doug Hoyte. Let over Lambda. HCSW and Hoytech. ISBN 978-1-4357-1275-1. 2008.

A gloriously opinionated (in the best way) take on Lisp macro programming. The author treats Lisp – one of the first languages – as the ultimate, final language to which all others can (and should) be translated, since they’re simply special cases of Lisp forms. And he makes a surprisingly compelling case.

The material builds extensively on On Lisp, re-presenting the idea of anaphoric macros (those that bind lexical variables for use in their bodies) and extending them with pandoric macros that allow introspection into an otherwise closed lexical environment. A lot of these examples feel contrived as presented, but the techniques are anything but: powerful ways to build abstractions.

The finale is the implementation of Forth in Lisp, and then a reflection to allow Forth programs to define Lisp functions – converting a (transparent) threaded-interpreted structure into an (opaque) code block. It’s a slightly non-standard Forth, but it’s true to the basics and exposes issues like the implementations of interpretation, compilation, and tail recursion really well. It’s only another step to explore Lisp implemented in Forth through the medium of macro programming, which deserves a book itself.