Haskell before Haskell: an alternative lesson in practical logics of the ENIAC

Abstract

This article expands on Curry's work on how to implement the problem of inverse interpolation on the ENIAC (1946) and his subsequent work on developing a theory of program composition (1948-1950). It is shown that Curry's hands-on experience with the ENIAC on the one side and his acquaintance with systems of formal logic on the other, were conductive to conceive a compact "notation for program construction"which in turn would be instrumental to a mechanical synthesis of programs. Since Curry's systematic programming technique pronounces a critique of the Goldstine-von Neumann style of coding, his "calculus of program composition"not only anticipates automatic programming but also proposes explicit hardware optimisations largely unperceived by computer history until Backus' famous ACM Turing Award lecture (1977). The cohesion of these findings asks for an integrative historiographical approach. An appendix gives, for the first time, a full description of Curry's arithmetic compiler. * This paper is a contribution to the ENIAC NOMOI project.

Histories of algorithms: Past, present and future

“…For one of the first electronic digital computers, the ENIAC (1946), a number of such studies have appeared. Bullynck andDe Mol (2010) andDe Mol, Carlé andBullynck (2015) have shown the reciprocal dependencies that exist between the machine, its users and the mathematics used and transformed. It analyses questions as how speed and accuracy of an algorithm have to be balanced against simplicity of control and program expression, or how the architecture of a computer conditions the short and long term memory management of a procedure.…”

Computing Primes (1929-1949): Transformations in the Early Days of Digital Computing

“…They functioned as sites for transfer of engineering and programming skills, and, nurtured by experience with the machine and by encounters with other people developing, using or servicing the computer, could lead to new ideas and dispositives . As, e.g., discussed in [11], the actual practices and the socializing around ENIAC influenced the development of at least two programming styles, that of J. von Neumann and that of H.B. Curry.…”

When Logic Meets Engineering: Introduction to Logical Issues in the History and Philosophy of Computer Science

“…21 Amongst others, he connected this work to combinatory logic, lambda calculus and recursive functions. See De Mol et al 2015 for a detailed discussion. 22 See, for example , Chomsky 1959.…”