Foundations of computing languages (was: How does Ruby compare to Python?? How good is DESIGN of Rubycompared to Python?)

[Stephen Horne]

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 04:24:28 -0000, claird at lairds.com (Cameron Laird)
wrote:

>In article <103qr5nhpiojv25 at corp.supernews.com>, I griped:

>>Ouch!  I'm old enough to take some of this personally.
>>Unless you're making some extremely recondite point
>>(about Skolem's influences?), "a century" is too rough
>>an approximation for me.  Church and Kleene introduced
>>the lambda calculus in the '30s; Schoenfinkel, then 
>>Curry, invented currying the decade before.

Oops - sorry

>Wrong.  Well, true, all of it, but I'm neglecting Frege.

That's interesting, but I was actually thinking of Church and Kleene.
I'm just so rusty on my history that I only had a *very* vague sense
of the dates and didn't even remember that anonymous functions and
currying predate lambda calculus. You can rest assured that my wrist
has been slapped.

I don't think I ever heard of Frege before. Nor Skolem. Which is quite
bad, really, if the impressions I've just got from some quick searches
are right.


-- 
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk