fix dip

1 files changed, 43 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/MAINPAGE.md b/MAINPAGE.md
index de5bdce..0ba8c25 100644
--- a/MAINPAGE.md
+++ b/MAINPAGE.md
@@ -1,3 +1,44 @@
-# Introduction
+# Introduction {#mainpage}
 Stem aims to be a minimal interpreted stack based programming language
-that allows for metaprogramming and a foreign language interface.
+that allows for metaprogramming and a foreign language interface. It features
+a C API that is elegant and simple. Additionally, garbage collection is
+not needed in this language as the responsibility of writing memory safe
+operations is put in the hands of the maintainers of the builtin functions
+and FLI library maintainers. Therefore, the end user does not need to worry
+about memory allocation while the implementation remains extremely simple.
+
+# Installation
+`make` and `sudo make install`. To generate the html documentation, one must first
+install `doxygen` as an optional dependency. If you are on a BSD or MacOS, you
+must use `gmake`.
+
+# Quickstart
+Because this is a stack based language, all operations are done in reverse polish. For example, to add two numbers together:
+```
+3 4 +
+```
+would return the result `7`. `3` and `4` get pushed onto the stack when they are written out as literals in the language, and `+` is a builtin
+that adds the top two elements of the stack. In this language, there are two kinds of objects: literals
+(strings, ints, floats, words, and literals of type `VERROR` are built in), and quotes that contain these literals (arrays of valid statements that can be evaluated).
+Words might be new to you if you're coming from another language. If you're coming from lisp, a words are analogous to symbols. If you're coming from another
+language, a word is a literal that has the special property that they can be bound to functions. For example, the `+` symbol is a word, which is bound
+to the action of adding two numbers when called.
+
+Let's look at a real example of a REPL implementation in this language:
+```
+repl [ "> " . read strquote eval repl ] func
+repl
+```
+`repl` is a word, which means it is a literal, and everything that is a literal gets pushed onto the stack.
+Everything between the `[` and `]` is an element in a quote. Then, we see the `func` word. If a word is already bound to a function,
+the function gets called instead of getting pushed to the stack, so the `func` function gets called, which takes the top two
+elements off the stack, and creates a function called `repl` where now every time `repl` is called in the future, the quote is evaluated
+instead.
+
+Let's take a closer look at the quote:
+```
+"> " . read strquote eval repl
+```
+`.` takes the first thing off the stack and prints it. In this case, it would print a prompt `> ` every REPL loop. `read` reads a value from stdin,
+then `strquote` turns that string into a quote. `eval` pops the first thing off the stack and evaluates the quote in the same way calling a function
+does, and then finally `repl` gets called again at the end so we can loop forever.