Lambda the Ultimate

FORTRAN 25th anniversary film, 1982, 12.5 minutes. Computer History Museum lot number X2843.2005, donated by Daniel N. Leeson. Windows Media Video (12.8 megabytes)

Another great resource from Paul McJones.

The video quality isn't great, but this is still very much worth your time. It's interesting to see the faces behind the history of our discipline.

I am not going to list all the ideas from the film that are worth discussing. Let me just note that several remarks at the begining show just how remarkable the notion of a programming language really is (or was, at the time).

The guys discussing Fortress will also find several of the comments made in the film interesting.

Monads in Ruby, a several-part work in progress, is an attempt to explain and demonstrate monads in Ruby. It looks pretty good so far, although I feel like we could coax a friendlier syntax out of Ruby with a little effort. Maybe in Part 4!

Obligatory LtU connection: the author credits Dave Herman's Schemer's Introduction to Monads as an inspiration.

(One of my co-workers mentioned this to me. I think he might have been making fun of me...)