

SSA and the Lambda Tribe - wingo
http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/07/12/static-single-assignment-for-functional-programmers/

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contextfree
To someone like me who's interested in compilers but doesn't have deep
understanding of their workings, this is a really fascinating article! I
appreciate the history, maybe should dig in to some of the linked papers ...

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kenjackson
I skimmed this article, but it really deserves a nice bowl of cereal and a
comfy chair to go with it. This looks like serious fun. More like this please!

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chalst
The slides to Zadeck's keynote at the Static Single-Assignment Form Seminar,
2009, are worth reading for the history:

<http://www.cdl.uni-saarland.de/ssasem/>

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wingo
Indeed! I liked Wimmer's notes on SSA in HotSpot too, though for other
reasons. Too bad there were no slides for the GCC experience report.

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bitdiddle
great article! It reminds me of Curien's work on categorical combinators,
where the machine definition is given by the equational axioms of the model,
in this case the cartesian closed categories.

I don't think McCarthy was informed by the lambda calculus either. I've heard
his background was in functional analysis and he was motivated by symbolic
differentiation when inventing lisp. I'd be interested to know this history
better.

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pavpanchekha
Yeah, his first papers and presentations on lisp already delved into basic
pattern-based symbolic differentiation. What a brilliant guy...

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kenjackson
wingo, is this line a typo?

    
    
       let t1 = f t1

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wingo
Yep. Fixed, thanks.

