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* Rick JELLIFFE
|
| I am not so sure that functional programming is so bad: SQL is
| basically a functional language is it not?
No, like Matt said, SQL is declarative.
The best-known functional programming languages at the moment are
probably Standard ML and Haskell.
| I suspect that the problem with functional programming is that it
| changes the boundaries between what is hard and what is
| straightforward too much.
Personally, I think the problem is much simpler. It is not hyped and
it requires people to change their way of thinking. Seeing how hard it
is for programming languages with a non-C syntax (but similar concepts)
to make it the outlook is not good for functional programming.
Hype might change that, but there has been precious little of it so far.
| XSLT's approach of allowing extensions (cheating) on a small and
| targetted application domain seems to be pretty acceptable--it
| forces you to use a different tool to solve the problems which (the
| kinds of FP used in) XSLT is not great at.
I see this as an argument for Lisp. XSLT with a Lisp-based syntax and
proper integration with Lisp as a programming language would be an
awesome XML processing tool. Performance would probably also be much
better than with the current Java-based systems.
For example, an RSS->HTML stylesheet fragment (forgetting namespaces
for now):
(template item
(li nil
(a (href (xpath link))
(xpath title))
(xpath description)))
| I remember his suggestion, after working with functional programming
| techiques (and liking them very much) was that perhaps they require
| a too high level of abstraction for typical programmer (typically
| trained programmers?), compared to procedural code (we are used to
| assignment):
I think this may very well be true. As Richard Gabriel observed, it
seems that programmers tend to favour languages that do not require
abstractions. And I think he was very likely right that abstractions
are not the answer to everything.
--Lars M.
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