[ProgSoc] Progsoc debate?

Nathan de Vries nathan at atnan.com
Tue Apr 8 10:15:16 EST 2008


On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 09:50 +1000, Thomas Given-Wilson wrote:
> Also can someone clarify what is meant by "Functional languages vs.
> functional languages with limited/no side effects (real world vs. 
> academic)"?

By functional I meant languages with support for first class functions &
lambda abstraction mechanisms at a bare minimum. By "limited/no side
effects" I meant languages which allow you to write "pure" programs
where function evaluation yields no side effects (note the use of "allow
you to", rather than "force").

Perhaps a more succinct topic would be:

        Pure functional languages vs. functional languages
        
Of course, all the definitions I've used here are open to debate and I
haven't even started to mention which languages I believe are pure &
impure. Your classification of Haskell & (S)ML as impure languages
implies that this debate could get interesting :).


Cheers,

--
Nathan de Vries
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