alt Hacker NewsMcCarthy's pure Lisp existed only on paper. The first Lisp that ran on a computer had mutable variables, as did Lisp 1.5, Maclisp, etc...
Immutability requires lots of copying and early computers didn't have much memory to spare...
McCarthy's pure Lisp existed only on paper. The first Lisp that ran on a computer had mutable variables, as did Lisp 1.5, Maclisp, etc...
Immutability requires lots of copying and early computers didn't have much memory to spare...
fair point but from memory most of early programs in his paper were purely immutable in nature (tree recursion and substition), right ?