In 1977, John Backus presented an algebraic vision of programming that departed from the von Neumann fetch-and-store semantics. This seminal paper has influenced functional programming in many ways. In this episode, I read excerpts from and comment on John Backus’s 1977 Turing Award Lecture paper Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? A Functional Style and Its Algebra of Programs.
Thoughts on Functional Programming Podcast
An off-the-cuff stream of Functional Programming ideas, skills, patterns, and news from Functional Programming expert Eric Normand.
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Do we use metacircular evaluators in real life?
In SICP, the authors define a metacircular evaluator of Scheme written in Scheme to change the semantics of the language. Do we do stuff like that in real life? In this episode, I explore this listener question.
The Next 700 Programming Languages
In this episode, I excerpt and comment on a seminal paper in programming language design, from all the way back in 1966, called The Next 700 Programming Languages.
What makes some API’s become DSL’s?
What causes an API to cross the line into becoming a DSL? Is it really a ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ situation? I’ve been searching for an answer for years. And I think I found it in a paper I read recently for this podcast: Lisp: A language for stratified design. In this episode, we go over the main factor that makes an API a DSL: the closure property.
What is software design?
I’ve never been satisfied with the standard definition of ‘software design’. Is the term useful? What could it mean that is useful? In this episode, I talk about some definitions that I don’t agree with and explain my definition.
Why Functional Programming Matters
In this episode, I read excerpts from Why Functional Programming Matters by John Hughes. Does it answer the question of what is functional programming and why is it powerful?
My response to Out of the Tar Pit
Out of the Tar Pit came out 14 years ago and it was a big influence on my thinking. I’ve thought a lot about it and I want to share some extensions and refinements of the ideas in the paper. Specifically, I hope to present a more objective definition of complexity and refine the idea of Essential vs. Accidental complexity.
Out of the Tar Pit
In this episode, I read excerpts from Out of the Tar Pit, a classic paper in the functional programming community.
What is software architecture?
I try to define software architecture, both in the large and in the small.