Thanks, Boyko, those are fascinating resources. On 26 March 2012 08:23, Boyko Bantchev <[email protected]> wrote:
> > More than 20 years history to that concept, I think. ................... > > John Backus in his now classic 1977 ACM Turing Award Lecture, > where he defined the FP language and an algebra of programs > http://www.thocp.net/biographies/papers/backus_turingaward_lecture.pdf > made a very strong case of functional programming without variables. > > (To the interested, I'd also highly recommend seeing Backus's lecture > on FL, the FP's successor -- a video lecture from 1987! -- available > at http://www.archive.org/details/JohnBack1987 .) > > So variable-free (including argument-free) programming is at least > 35 years old now. > > Since then, much research has gone into discovering general patterns > of recursion which, once incorporated in the language, obviate the > need for direct use of recursion. See e.g. this other classic -- > the 'bananas' article: > http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.41.125 . > > One can observe similarities between the variable-free styles of > array languages and other functional languages, but in general -- > and perhaps regretably -- there hasn't been much communication > between the two. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- written on a keyboard, so please forgive typos http://tinyurl.com/rareblog ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
