5 ms·

Lambda: The Ultimate Imperative (1976) [pdf]

• tombert 7y ago
  I love reading these older papers, because since there wasn't a whole lot of prior implicit understanding of computer-science, they're a lot easier to read for a wannabe-intellectual like myself (someone who loves the academic world but who isn't smart enough to actually be an academic). Guy Steele's papers in particular are almost always an entertaining read. My favorite by him is basically a glorified rant about how the programmer shouldn't have to manually handle tail-recursion (I'd link to it but I cannot seem to find it...If someone here knows where it is I'd appreciate it).
  • efdb 7y ago
    LAMBDA: The Ultimate GOTO http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5753/AIM-443.pdf?sequence=2 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5753/AIM-443.p...
    • tombert 7y ago
      Thank you!
      • BoiledCabbage 7y ago
        https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda_Papers https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda_Papers
    • neilv 7y ago
      Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_call https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_call https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r5rs/Proper-tail-recursion.html https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r5rs/Proper-tail-recursi...
• TimSchumann 7y ago
  Didn’t realize the blog was named after a thing. I guess I feel young now.
• kristianp 7y ago
  Escape Expressions and Fluid Variables? Call by need? Looks like I'll have to read it.
• unhammer 7y ago
  > A third possibility would be to pass the SQRT function as an argument to QUAD (don't laugh!) :) I was excited to see the heading "3.3.1 Free (Global) Variables", considering the amount of work people do to avoid those (interpeters and runEnv and so on), but it seems they end up using top-level bindings and assignments …