[Haskell-cafe] David Turner quote on lisp and FP

[Rustom Mody]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 11:52 AM, Sean Leather <sean.leather at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20150312/7699321d/attachment.html>