Question

I was reading “JavaScript: The Good Parts” and the author mentions that JavaScript is the first of the lambda languages to be launched.

JavaScript’s functions are first class objects with (mostly) lexical scoping. JavaScript is the first lambda language to go mainstream. Deep down, JavaScript has more in common with Lisp and Scheme than with Java. It is Lisp in C’s clothing. This makes JavaScript is remarkably powerful language.

I didn’t get what is a lambda language. What are the properties of such a language and how is it different from languages like Java, C, C++ and Php?

Answer 1

I’ve never heard anyone use the term “lambda language,” and the only plausible definitions I can think of would exclude JavaScript as “the first.”

That said, I suspect he may mean either:

• Functional languages: a class of languages in which computation is (or can be) modeled as a stateless composition of (possibly higher-order) functions. LISP, Scheme, ML, Haskell, etc. are frequently ascribed to this class, although several of these are more properly mixed paradigm or “functional optional” languages. Javascript arguably contains the necessary features to make a “functional style” of programming possible.
• Languages which allow the creation of anonymous functions (using the function syntax in JavaScript; this is written lambda in many languages, hence possibly “lambda languages.”

Both usages are derived from the use of the greek letter lambda to denote function abstraction in the lambda calculus, the model of computation devised by Alonzo Church and upon which functional programming is based.

Edit: looked at Google Books result—“first to go mainstream”; well, that’s arguable. I’d put forward that LISP was at one point at least reasonably mainstream. It’s a fair point though, JavaScript’s semantics are directly inspired by Scheme and it certainly reached a larger audience than any other language that can make similar claims.