Timeline for Where did the notion of 'calling' a function come from?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S Feb 17 at 22:23 | vote | accept | Timo | ||
| Jan 19 at 10:29 | history | protected | gnat | ||
| Jan 17 at 23:42 | answer | added | Quuxplusone | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 27, 2024 at 4:38 | answer | added | vaughan | timeline score: 6 | |
| Aug 21, 2014 at 21:57 | audit | Close votes | |||
| Aug 21, 2014 at 21:57 | |||||
| Aug 20, 2014 at 14:32 | comment | added | Caleb | @BasileStarynkevitch I don't disagree with you about λ-calculus, but note that the Wikipedia entry for that term uses "call" in several places to explain what it means to apply a function. | |
| Aug 19, 2014 at 13:21 | comment | added | BobDalgleish | A synonym for 'invoke' is 'call'. | |
| Aug 19, 2014 at 1:48 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/501546274643263489 | ||
| Aug 18, 2014 at 22:22 | vote | accept | Timo | ||
| S Feb 17 at 22:23 | |||||
| Aug 18, 2014 at 22:12 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | Most languages I use only use call for procedures, subroutines or methods, but use apply for functions (e.g. Haskell, Scala, ML). | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 21:11 | history | edited | Timo | CC BY-SA 3.0 | fixed grammar |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 20:51 | history | edited | gnat | CC BY-SA 3.0 | title clarified from question text |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:28 | comment | added | David Conrad | In some dialects of assembly language (such as x86 assembly) the opcodes are named call and ret or some variant thereof. It is possible that programming languages inherited the terminology from the underlying hardware, although that would still leave the question of why the hardware designers chose those names for the operations. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:13 | comment | added | Timo | @Doval: good idea, I only know it as 'pass arguments by value/reference etc.', though. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:53 | comment | added | Basile Starynkevitch | In lambda-calculus you apply a function (and the lambda operator is making abstractions). Some languages speak of invoking, not calling, a function. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:47 | comment | added | Doval | @FrustratedWithFormsDesigner No clue, but I figured they'd have better luck trying to find the origins of "subroutine call" or "procedure call" than "function call", which doesn't make sense historically. I realize the comment doesn't answer the question, but that's precisely why I made it a comment and not an answer. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:46 | comment | added | FrustratedWithFormsDesigner | @Doval: Yes, but why use the very "call" in "procedure call" instead of a different verb? | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:28 | comment | added | Doval | It probably comes from the different semantics for handling the arguments - call by value, call by reference, call by name, etc. I also imagine that the term originated with "procedure call" or "subroutine call" and was only applied to functions later. In mathematics you apply functions to their arguments, and what we call functions are almost always procedures/subroutines (because mathematical functions don't have side effects). | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:28 | answer | added | Caleb | timeline score: 22 | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:19 | history | edited | gnat | edited tags | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:11 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:36 | |||||
| Aug 18, 2014 at 18:07 | history | asked | Timo | CC BY-SA 3.0 |