"Can Programming Be Liberated from the Von Neumann Style?" by John Backus

Our meetings always get a little spotty around the holidays. We've decided not to have a meeting on Thanksgiving day, for obvious reasons, so the next meeting is going to be on 7 December at 11:30 a.m., when we'll discuss "Can Programming Be Liberated from the Von Neumann Style? (https://www.cs.ucf.edu/~dcm/Teaching/COT4810-Fall%202012/Literature/Backus.pdf)" (free PDF link) by John Backus.

It's an interesting paper for many reasons: Are you programming in "the Von Neumann style?" What are the alternatives? Backus presents a notion of "functional programming" which is decidedly different than how many people use that phrase.

At 30 or so pages, this paper is a bit longer than the others we've read, but it's also considerably more technical. If you find the algebra in the middle a bit much, you can get the general sense of the paper by reading sections 1-10 and 15-16 and skipping the rest. The full paper is worth reading, but please don't let the math drive you away in any case!

Here's a commentary on the paper (https://www.quora.com/Do-you-agree-with-John-Backus-in-Can-Programming-Be-Liberated-from-the-Von-Neumann-Style-regarding-functional-style-programming/answer/Tikhon-Jelvis?share=46f2db3e) by Tikhon Jelvis, Lead Data Scientist at Target. (Personal note: A video of Guy Steele's talk "Growing a Language" can be found in the last footnote of this commentary. It's one of my favorite technical talks of all time.)