Functional programming: Difference between revisions

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[[John Backus]] presented [[FP (programming language)|FP]] in his 1977 [[Turing Award]] lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated From the [[Von Neumann architecture|von Neumann]] Style? A Functional Style and its Algebra of Programs".<ref name="Backus 1977">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1145/359576.359579| title=Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?: A functional style and its algebra of programs| journal=Communications of the ACM| volume=21| issue=8| pages=613–641| year=1978| last1=Backus |first1=J. |doi-access=free}}</ref> He defines functional programs as being built up in a hierarchical way by means of "combining forms" that allow an "algebra of programs"; in modern language, this means that functional programs follow the [[principle of compositionality]].{{Citation <ref>needed|reason=I dont https://wwwcompletely agree with this interpretation of John Backus definition of functional programs, which I feel is widely misunderstood.slideshare.net/slideshow/backus-turingaward-lecture/250851470Backus As he is very sadly no longer alive, we can'st ask him, but a reference for this interpretation, especially if it includes a justification, would be very beneficial.|Turing-Award-Lecturedate=February </ref>2017}} Backus's paper popularized research into functional programming, though it emphasized [[function-level programming]] rather than the lambda-calculus style now associated with functional programming.

The 1973 language [[ML (programming language)|ML]] was created by [[Robin Milner]] at the [[University of Edinburgh]], and [[David Turner (computer scientist)|David Turner]] developed the language [[SASL (programming language)|SASL]] at the [[University of St Andrews]]. Also in Edinburgh in the 1970s, Burstall and Darlington developed the functional language [[NPL (programming language)|NPL]].<ref>R.M. Burstall. Design considerations for a functional programming language. Invited paper, Proc. Infotech State of the Art Conf. "The Software Revolution", Copenhagen, 45–57 (1977)</ref> NPL was based on [[Kleene's recursion theorem|Kleene Recursion Equations]] and was first introduced in their work on program transformation.<ref>R.M. Burstall and J. Darlington. A transformation system for developing recursive programs. Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery 24(1):44–67 (1977)</ref> Burstall, MacQueen and Sannella then incorporated the [[Polymorphism (computer science)|polymorphic]] type checking from ML to produce the language [[Hope (programming language)|Hope]].<ref>R.M. Burstall, D.B. MacQueen and D.T. Sannella. HOPE: an experimental applicative language. Proceedings 1980 LISP Conference, Stanford, 136–143 (1980).</ref> ML eventually developed into several dialects, the most common of which are now [[OCaml]] and [[Standard ML]].