The Eric Normand Podcast Lambda: The Ultimate GOTO
Dec 7, 2020
The podcast delves into the historical misconceptions surrounding go-to statements versus procedure calls. It critiques programming style and highlights a pivotal 1977 paper to clarify language design. The discussion expands to the complexity of structured programming and the importance of documentation. Furthermore, the debate on code clarity emphasizes alternatives to go-to statements, while exploring the impact of Lambda Calculus. The contrasting development philosophies of Fortran and Lisp are also examined, revealing insights into programming constructs and modularity.
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Procedure Call Myth
- The myth that procedure calls are expensive stems from poorly designed language implementations, not inherent limitations.
- Procedure calls offer stylistic freedom and can replace go-to statements for better code structure.
Tail Recursion Optimization
- Tail-recursive procedure calls, where the last operation is another procedure call, can be optimized as simple jumps.
- This eliminates the overhead of pushing and popping return addresses, making them as efficient as go-to statements.
Unnecessary Overhead
- Many compilers add unnecessary prologue and epilogue code around every procedure, significantly impacting performance.
- Compiled MACLisp's speed comes from reversing the register-saving responsibility to the caller.