[plt-scheme] history of stack and heap.

The idea that pop is a special-purpose garbage collection construct  
is something I encountered in my readings as a grad student, and  
thats 22+ years ago.




On Apr 24, 2009, at 12:19 PM, hendrik at topoi.pooq.com wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 09:40:41AM -0400, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>>
>> Stacks as a special-purpose form of GC is a hat that's even older
>> than me. And I am old.
>
> Let me try to recall history.
>
> Stacks were definitely well-known in 1960, when Algol 60 came out.
> Possibly even in 58, when the preliminary designs were published.
>
> Garbage colection appeared with Lisp, as far as I know, around the  
> same
> time.  But Lisp still used a stack, not a heap.  And the Lisp
> garbage collector used a stack.
>
> So it looks as if stacks are older than garbage collectors.
>
> Ah.  There was also IPL-V, which had dynamic storage allocation and a
> stack, but reference counting instead of garbage collection.
> Programs were linked data structures on the heap.  I can't remember
> whether the stack was also on the non-collected heap.  Does anyone  
> here
> have a better memory than mine?
>
> -- hendrik
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