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I'm not sure but I kinda recall some old lisper saying they added imperative features due to idioms outside of the lisp lab. `progn` was a way to appeal to fort
by agumonkey 1y ago
I'm not sure but I kinda recall some old lisper saying they added imperative features due to idioms outside of the lisp lab. `progn` was a way to appeal to fortran coders, i believe `set!` was in the same bag..
- Jtsummers 1y agoset! is from Scheme. Lisp has had set and setq since the beginning along with prog (I don't know when progn was added). The LISP I manual describes the program feature as being "like a FORTRAN program with LISP statements", but that's not the same as saying it is there to appeal to Fortran programmers. https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/rle_lisp/LISP_I_Programmers_Manual_Mar60.pdf https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mi...
- agumonkey 1y agoi'm just wondering if mccarthy and early designers were haskellers (pardon the anachronism) in spirit (pure recursive functions, as in the symbolic derivator example) or freeform programming.