Mathematica as a normal programming language

I'm interested in Mathematica's core language for both practical development and as an object of computer science study. Actually, the former is more of a means to the latter. I would like to create complete applications, but mainly to get experience and ideas for creating my own language. I have many ideas for it already, and one of them is to explore Mathematica's unique M-expression syntax, rule-based programming, and other interesting semantics. To this end, I have two questions:

Is the language specification available anywhere? And are there any particularly significant resources on Mathematica as a language?

Are there any legal restrictions on applications created and/or compiled with Mathematica, and if so, do they differ between offerings?

Answer

The book Power Programming With Mathematica: The Kernel by David B. Wagner, McGraw-Hill, 1996, which proudly announces on its cover that it covers Mathematica 3, devotes Chapter 7 to expression evaluation. Although long out of print, it is the only publication I know of that gives a step-by-step description of how the Mathematica Kernel does its evaluation.

I'm sure the Kernel has changed a lot since Mathematica 3, but Wagner's discussion of the basics of expression evaluation might still be relevant.

Luckily the book can be obtained here.

Comments

functions - Get leading series expansion term?

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