Predicate Logic as Programming Language - Kowalski 1974 The purpose of programming languages is to enable the communication from man to machine of problems and their general means of solution. Kowalski shows us that predicate logic can be used as the basis of a "useful and practical, high-level, non-deterministic programming language with sound theoretical foundations." ... Continue Reading

The Semantic Elegance of Applicative Languages - Turner '81. Here's a paper you can enjoy simply for its prose! In what does the alleged superiority of applicative languages consist? In what indeed! And while we're at it, what's an applicative language? I looked up a few definitions; if we call it a functional language I ... Continue Reading

Probabilistic Programming - Gordon et al 2014 Let's jump straight into some code - what is the meaning of this program in the PROB programming language? [code lang=text] bool c1, c2; c1 = Bernoulli(0.5); c2 = Bernoulli(0.5); observe(c1 || c2); return (c1,c2); [/code] On lines 2 and 3, c1 and c2 are assigned to the ... Continue Reading

The power of interoperability: why objects are inevitable - Aldrich 2013 This is a thought-provoking essay from 2013 in defence of objects and OOP. To many, the reason for objects' success is not obvious. Indeed, objects have been strongly criticised. ... While there has unquestionably been some hype about objects over the years, I have ... Continue Reading

Monads for functional programming - Wadler, 1992 There's something about the word 'monad', and about the concept of monads, that people find off-putting. If this was a paper coming from an OO (e.g. Java) perspective it might have been titled something like "A principled approach for wrapper types" which doesn't sound nearly so daunting does ... Continue Reading