[plt-scheme] Closures

On Nov 9, 2007, at 7:32 PM, Jakub Piotr Cłapa wrote:

> Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>> BUT, neither environments nor closures are a necessity for  
>> executing programs that deal with functions as ordinary values.  
>> The history of computing has proposed a number of mechanisms and  
>> for all we know, we chose the wrong one.
>
> And this mechanisms are? (I'll do my homework gooogle search but  
> some starting points are critical for this) :)


Look for combinators and combinator machines. This is stuff from the  
early 1980s.

WARNING: "not a necessity" does not mean the alternative is better.  
It exists. And it didn't pay off, after high hopes.

-- Matthias