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Re: "Misunderstanding of the lambda calculus"


From: Jonathan Yavner
Subject: Re: "Misunderstanding of the lambda calculus"
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:51:29 -0500
User-agent: KMail/1.6.2

> This may amuse some of the readers of this mailing list.  While
> browsing the Wikipedia entry on lambda calculus, I saw that some wit
> had written:
>     More archaic Lisps, such as Emacs Lisp, still use dynamic binding,
>     and so are not based on the lambda calculus. Rather, they are
>     based on the syntax of the lambda calculus, together with a
>     misunderstanding of the notion of binding and substitution in the
>     lambda calculus. 

Okay, I'll bite.  I slapped an {{NPOV}} sticker on that section 
("failure to maintain neutral point of view").  Would anyone who cares 
about such things please edit my complaint for correctness?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lambda_calculus#Programming_languages
| The section on programming languages seems to be POV. It refers to
| Emacs Lisp but not ALGOL 60 as "archaic" (only Emacs Lisp is still in
| use). It incorrectly lauds Common Lisp as lacking dynamic binding (all
| Lisps need dynamic binding, which CL calls "special variables"). The
| claim that binding in Lisps don't match the lambda calculus because
| their authors "misunderstand" the calculus (rather than because the
| calculus in pure form has poor efficiency) is just a damn lie.




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