A quick History of the CONCATINATIVE Programming
1930's 1950's
theoretical
practical work
theories of Functional Programming
- The Lambda Calculus (Alanzo Church)
-
Combinatory Logic (Moses Schönfinkel and Haskell Curry)
1930's 1950's
theoretical
Lisp Haskel ML
functional Languages that came out of
Lambda calculus and
Combinatory Logic
1950's 1970's
expressed as [Variables, Functions,
Combinators, and Applications]
Forth
1970 Chuck Moore
- RPN (post-fix notation, mostly)
- stack-based
practical work
Forth, the programming language.
UPS and Fedex: digital signature tablets
Power companies: electrical switches
GE SONET switch: Forth is the OS and REPL
NASA satellites run on Forth.
The space shuttle’s robotic arm and flight navigation computers were programmed in Forth.
coded in Forth:
Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?: a functional style and its algebra of programs
- creates languages: FP, FP84, FL
- makes a distinction between 'value-level' and 'function-level' languages
1977
John Backus Turing Award lecture
theoretical
Postscript
- RPN (post-fix notation)
- stack-based
1982
practical work
Joy
- RPN (post-fix notation)
- stack-based
- functional
2001 Manfred von Thun
theoretical
practical work
Concatenation Calculus
"The Theory of Concatenative Combinators"
all expressions denote functions […] juxtaposition…denotes function composition.
a search for minimal set of combinators:
2002 Brent Kirby
theoretical
Factor
- RPN (post-fix notation)
- stack-based
- functional
- dynamic types, with an object system
2003 Slava Pestov
theoretical
practical work
Factor
- Stack-based language
- Dynamic typing
- Extensible syntax
- Powerful Collections library
- Higher-order functions
- Lisp-style Macros
- Object system with Inheritance, Generic functions, Predicate dispatch and Mixins
- Homoiconic syntax
- Error handling with Restarts
- Continuations
2003 Slava Pestov
Cat
- RPN (post-fix notation)
- stack-based
- functional
- strongly typed
2006 Christopher Diggins
theoretical
practical work
Off shoots
- RawrCat (github.com/ephsec/RawrCat)
Kitten
- RPN (post-fix notation) also in-fix
- stack-based
- functional
- strongly typed
2011 Jon Purdy
practical work
theoretical
(history of) FORTH, JOY, CAT AND other CP
By Nate Morse
(history of) FORTH, JOY, CAT AND other CP
Time to try out programming in a stack based, 'concatenative' language. Sounds more complex than it is, because these languages are simple to learn and do not sacrifice expressiveness or power. Within minutes you will understand how these languages work and how this very different style of programming enables code to be simple, consistent and performant.
