Related Readings and Functional Programming Humor

Related Readings

These readings are cultural, to help you develop some perspective on the role of functional languages and functional programming in real-world software development. Many of the articles refer to Lisp, a close cousin of Scheme.

• An article by Paul Graham describing how and why he (and a colleague) used Lisp to write the software for what is (now) Yahoo! Store.

  Paul Graham's site has number of other articles discussing advantages of using Lisp in programming projects.

• Common LISP's role in planning parts of the pathfinder mission

• Successful Scheme, an article from Unix Insider about Scheme and some of its real-world uses.

• The Functional Programming in the Real World website, with pointers to a slew of real-world projects that use functional languages.

• A Q&A on Scheme and Lisp

• Some of the software for NASA's Deep Space 1 was written in LISP.

• Schemers.org, the online home for all things Scheme.

Other Uses of Functional Languages

• "Today's Yahoo! Pick (http://picks.yahoo.com) was constructed using PLT Scheme and Oleg Kiselyov's SXML->HTML. (Charts and maps were made with other tools, but Scheme was used to turn these raw materials into a web site.) The ease of development has been extraordinary." [from a posting on the plt-scheme discussion list]