Code Read 9 - John Backus and Functional Programming
The 1977 Turing Award went to John Backus, and in his Turing Lecture, “Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?”, he made a vigorous case against traditional “von Neumann” programming (VNP), and for functional programming (FP). Unfortunately, the vigorous rhetorical style of this paper has infused the discussion of FP, resulting in countless flame wars over the last 30 years. The overly broad and weakly supported statements that make up the bulk of the discussion often boil down to these:
“Traditional programming languages are clumsy. FP will solve all your problems, if only you are smart enough to use it.”
versus
“FP is a toy. Nobody has done any real work with it, so it must be useless.”
Both sides are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and the good ideas of FP are tainted by their association with their more problematic brethren.
Read the rest of this entry »
posted in CS Literature, Code Reads, Functional Programming, John Backus | 2 Comments
