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John Backus: Function Level Programming and the FL Language 1987

Arthur Vard0 HN recommenders · 2019–2026
3K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-07-12

A 1987 talk in which John Backus, creator of Fortran, presents function-level programming and the FL language, a successor to his FP work. It is an archival recording with links to the related paper.

HN points to it as the primary source for Backus's ideas on programming beyond the von Neumann style, in threads about dead technologies and obscure languages.

Functional programmingProgramming language designTech pioneers & interviews

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3 comments from Hacker News

@maxharris2019 · in “Ask HN: What's a technology that died that you wished was still here”

John Backus's FL: [VIDEO] IBM research really should release the FL compiler they wrote! They stopped working on it in the early 90s, and haven't said a single thing about it since. There is the beginnings of a Haskell implementation that I tried to mess with a bit, but I don't know enough Haskell to get anywhere: [LINK]

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@mlajtos2022 · in “Show HN: A small, weird and unpractical programming language”

I see FP [0] (and FL [1,2]) as continuations of the original APL vision – an algebra for programs. It is really nice to see this implementation of FP and I hope it will spark interest in the community. :) [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]

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@metazip2026 · in “History of John Backus's functional programming project [draft]”

Videos to FL and FP: John Backus: Function Level Programming and the FL Language 1987 ( [VIDEO] ), John Backus Group Meeting - IBM Research - 5 July 1989 ( [LINK] ), Backus on functional programming ( [LINK] ) from Original: Oral History of John Backus ( [LINK] )

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