This book brings you face-to-face with the most fundamental idea in computer programming: The interpreter for a computer language is just another program. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But the implications are profound. If you are a computational theorist, the interpreter idea recalls Gödel’s discovery of the limitations of formal logical systems, Turing’s concept of a universal computer, and von Neumann’s basic notion of the stored-program machine. If you are a programmer, mastering theidea of an interpreter is a source of great power. It provokes a real shift in mindset, a basic change in the way you think about programming...