From: Tony Duell Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 1:21 PM [NB: Tony trimmed out the identities, so I'm not going to try to remember them.] In point of fact, closures were often referred to in the early LISP literature as "FUNARGs" ("functional arguments"), and their existence went by the name "the FUNARG problem." There is a famous paper by Joel Moses of MIT entitled "The Function of FUNCTION in LISP, or Why the FUNARG Problem Should be Called the Environment Problem" which discusses them quite clearly using an ALGOL-style syntax for the non- LISP programming audience. Available at http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/5854/AIM-199.pdf The late John McCarthy has been quoted as saying that LISP is the way it is because of his misunderstanding at the time of the lambda calculus. Stop trying to understand the latter to understand LISP, and you'll be way ahead. Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/