On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 11:52 AM, Sean Leather
On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 6:57 AM, Rustom Mody wrote:
There is this quote:
*It needs to be said very firmly that LISP is not a functional language at all. My suspicion is that the success of Lisp set back the development of a properly functional style of programming by at least ten years.* David Turner
found here and there on the net eg http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1376090701
Does anyone have/know the original reference?
As the 10th entry on my version of Google, I found:
Michael J C Gordon Programming Language Theory and its Implementation: Applicative and Imperative Paradigms
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.132.5717&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Gordon provides a more complete version of the quote on p. 148:
Here , for example, is a quotation by David Turner from the discussion after his paper in the book Mathematical Logic and Programming Languages:
It needs to be said very firmly that LISP, at least as represented by the dialects in common use, is not a functional language at all. LISP does have a functional subset, but that is a rather inconvenient programming language and there exists no significant body of programs written in it. Almost all serious programming in LISP makes heavy use of side effects and other referentially opaque features.
I think that the historical importance of LISP is that it was the fi rst language to provide ‘garbage- collected’ heap storage. This was a very important step forward. For the development of functional programming , however, I feel that the contribution of LISP has been a negative one. My suspicion is that the success of LISP set back the development of a properly functional style of programming by at least ten years.
The cited paper for the quote is:
Turner , DA. Functional programs as executable specifications, in Hoare CAR and Shepherdson JC ( eds.) Mathematical Logic and Programming Languages Prentice Hall, 1985. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/312/1522/363
The quote is the discussion for the paper, found on p. 387.
Regards, Sean
Thanks Sean for the very thorough search-n-time-travel For those who may be interested here is another curiosity: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/Steele-Interviews-John-McCarthy wherein McCarthy attributes the idea of functional programming to Fortran and Backus -- I must say I find that striking -- how things have turned in 50 years! All this is towards a lecture on programming paradigms that I am preparing. If there are other such juicy nuggets, I'll be pleased to receive them Rusi -- http://blog.languager.org