in reply to The first lambda language to go mainstream ?

There is nothing in JS which couldn't equally be done in Perl with anonymous subs and coderefs. Isn't Perl5 older?

And does not C have function-pointers and is it not even older then Perl?

Who cares?

For me to call JavaScript a "lambda language" is just as ridiculous as calling Perl a "lambda language".

Apart from that Douglas Crockford's book is good though...

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Re^2: The first lambda language to go mainstream ?
by ssandv (Hermit) on Aug 11, 2010 at 17:26 UTC

    Some searching leads one to the detail that C doesn't have true first-class functions because they aren't nestable, although GCC supports them as an extension, and also because pointer-defined functions don't close over their free variables.

[reply]
      You can argue that C does not have first-class functions and I would agree - that was not my point.

      The point I was trying to make above is that (in my opinion) having first-class functions is not enough for a language to be called a "lambda language" (meaning functional language).

      Otherwise practically every current language would be a "lambda language" and the term would not be very useful.

      And so I would argue that the statement about JS being the first mainsteam lambda langues is simply wrong and the question weather it was predated by Perl irrelevant.

[reply]
        > Otherwise practically every current language would be a "lambda language" and the term would not be very useful.

        so whats your definition of a lambda language?

        Cheers Rolf

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