
The Why of Y (2001) [pdf] - Tomte
https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WhyOfY.pdf
======
daveguy
In case you are wondering about the What of Y (as I was). Here is a paragraph
from the PDF:

"The point of Y is to provide a mechanism to write self-referential programs
without a special built-in means of accomplishing it. In Scheme there are
several mechanisms for writing such programs, including global function
definitions and letrec. Here is one way to write the factorial function in
Scheme:..."

~~~
dreamcompiler
It's an article about the thing this website (and company) is named after.
Hence it's probably the most meta-recursive link that ever gets posted on HN.
(BTW Dick Gabriel is a Zen-Lisper and poet. Wise programmers read everything
he writes.)

------
andrewl
David X. Cohen, the Futurama executive producer who also holds an MS in
computer science from UC Berkeley, wrote an episode called "The Why of Fry."
It involved some time travel, which I always think of as self-referential.

------
pyrale
I thought this was going to be about how Dijkstra stuck it to the Algol '68
Committee by introducing first order functions to the language after recursion
support was rejected...

------
bbcbasic
Y Combinator?

