Re: Who 'invented' CPS?

The earliest citation for something close to cps -- described  
informally -- took place at a post-talk discussion, recorded for  
posterity by the secretary of the conference (imagine such  
backwardness of using a conference to get feedback on a paper!). It  
is from around 1961 or 1962 and discusses tail-jumping behavior.

Around 1967-1969, several different accounts popped up in a number of  
contexts: L. Morris, a Polish guy whose name escapes me, Hewitt's  
actor stuff suggests it, Reynolds. A couple of years later formal  
descriptions showed up: Fischer and Abdali and Plotkin. Eventually  
you saw it used in denotational semantics by Strachey and Wadsworth  
(full jumps).

John Reynolds once said to me "it was in the air, everyone knew about  
it." Or "the real question was back then, who hadn't come up with the  
trick yet."

-- Matthias





On Nov 29, 2007, at 3:20 PM, Pascal Costanza wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This is a question for historians. ;)
>
> Who 'invented' or discovered continuation-passing style? Was this  
> part of the lambda papers or did this come up earlier? Was the  
> style used before it got that name?
>
> Thanks a lot in advance for any hints...
>
> Pascal
>
> -- 
> Pascal Costanza, mailto:[email protected], http://p-cos.net
> Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab
> Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
>
>
>
>
>