Ambitious evaluation: a new reading of an old issue

Abstract

Much has been written about Lazy Evaluation in Lisp---less about the other end of the spectrum---Ambitious Evaluation. Ambition is a very subjective concept, though, and if you have some preconceived idea of what you think an Ambitious Evaluator might be about, you might want to set it aside for a few minutes because this probably isn't going to be what you expect.