Re: Re: Keeping a running total?

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Subject: Re: Re: Keeping a running total?
From: "Colin Adams" <colinpauladams@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:00:23 +0100

This is the normal situation for functional (as opposed to imperative) languages.

Benefits:

1) Transparency - it is far easier to reason about a program that is free from side effects. So you can prove your program is correct with less effort. 2) Scalability - pure (side-effect free) programs are much easier to parallelize 3) Learning - variables in functional programs are the same as variables in mathematics - you don't have to learn a new concept (assingment) 4) Debugging - no need to monitor when a variable changes value. 5) Power - you can bind a variable to a function definition, then it can be passed as the argument of a function (see FXSL)

Downsides:

1) Performance - functional languages are stil slower than imperative languages, although the gap is closing. 2) Large scale program structure - OO programming seems to have the advantage here.

From: Steve <subsume@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Re: Keeping a running total?
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:52:59 -0400

Forgive me for the tangent, especially if it sounds ignorant, but as a
newbie to XSL I have a hard time understanding the benefit in not
being able to redefine a variable.  While I do not doubt the talent
and genius that went into the above examples and speculations, I can't
imagine a benefit that outweighs the time economics involved in coming
up with the above solutions, versus simply doing a $variable =
$variable - $x and being done with it in 10ish lines.

Comments welcome.

-Steve

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