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digitalmars.D - Does functional programming work?

reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html
Dec 30 2009
next sibling parent retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:46:58 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:
 
 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


The related reddit comments seem to have more value than the article 
(again, the author didn't really get his monads right):

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aje5b/
functional_programming_doesnt_work_and_what_to_do/
Dec 30 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Walter Bright:

An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:<


The right thing to do here is to learn a functional language (and its lingo)
and to try to use it to write some programs. It's time way better spent than
reading articles about functional programming :-)

Bye,
bearophile
Dec 30 2009
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is completely 
in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms, 
for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse yet) 
a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.
Jan 01 2010
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 
 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is completely 
 in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms, 
 for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse yet) 
 a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.


I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran 
into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored with 
it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal compiler.

80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny language 
tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the project. I just 
couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the language would 
shut off all the avenues.

When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so 
soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula 
II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.
Jan 01 2010
next sibling parent Mike James <foo bar.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:


 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 
 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is completely 
 in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms, 
 for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse yet) 
 a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.


 
 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran 
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored with 
 it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal compiler.
 
 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny language 
 tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the project. I just 
 couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the language would 
 shut off all the avenues.
 
 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so 
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula 
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


You missed out on Delphi - IMO  it gives C++ a good kicking ;->
Jan 01 2010
prev sibling parent reply retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 
 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't
 pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything*
 into the paradigm.


 
 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored with
 it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
 compiler.
 
 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny language
 tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the project. I just
 couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the language would
 shut off all the avenues.
 
 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what the 
pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary Pascal is just 
another procedural systems programming language like C. It has a bit 
different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), somewhat different 
rules for some default data types, but it's more or less C wrapped in a 
syntactic mask.

Switching from Pascal to C is like swiching from Christianity to Islam. 
Both are strict monotheistic mainstream religions. C developed into C++. 
The Pascal equivalent is Object Pascal. Also those are pretty similar.

TurboPascal = borland's brand for their pascal compiler - ever heard of 
Turbo C? From Pascal user's point of view: "I never got on the later 
bandwagons of Objective C, C++, Turbo C, etc. Never even looked at them."

The languages are no religions per se. Some single paradigm languages are 
single paradigm theoretic experiments for a good reason. E.g. how else 
would you prove things like Curry-Howard correspondence? (Go ahead - do 
it in D..) Those language were not meant to be practical programming 
languages. It just happens to be the case that some people managed to 
build a real world compiler for them. But of course that's possible - the 
languages mostrly are Turing complete etc.
Jan 03 2010
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 
 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what the 
 pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary Pascal is just 
 another procedural systems programming language like C. It has a bit 
 different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), somewhat different 
 rules for some default data types, but it's more or less C wrapped in a 
 syntactic mask.


Pick up a copy of "Pascal User Manual and Report." That's pure Pascal. 
It's also quite useless. Your program has to be all in one file, for 
instance. For another, writing I/O always appends a newline. Try writing 
binary files with that. There was no way to get at the bit 
representation of a type. Etc.
Jan 03 2010
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what the 
 pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary Pascal is 
 just another procedural systems programming language like C. It has a 
 bit different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), somewhat 
 different rules for some default data types, but it's more or less C 
 wrapped in a syntactic mask.


 
 Pick up a copy of "Pascal User Manual and Report." That's pure Pascal. 
 It's also quite useless. Your program has to be all in one file, for 
 instance. For another, writing I/O always appends a newline. Try writing 
 binary files with that. There was no way to get at the bit 
 representation of a type. Etc.


That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to D; 
it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the same, 
except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more flexible 
(virtual and named constructors...).

The only thing that was really lacking in Delphi are templates. But for 
compensation, it had powerful RTTI. Try writing a 
reflection/serialization mechanism in D that's as powerful Delphi's. I 
bet you won't succeed, not even with D2. (Need to fix some compiler bugs 
or deficiencies in the area of __traits first.) Even if you succeed, the 
end result will be probably harder to use. (If that sounds polemic, show 
me a D library that implements full serialization on 
Delphi/Java/whatever level, and I'll shut up.)
Jan 03 2010
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. 
 It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what 
 the pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary Pascal 
 is just another procedural systems programming language like C. It 
 has a bit different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), somewhat 
 different rules for some default data types, but it's more or less C 
 wrapped in a syntactic mask.


 Pick up a copy of "Pascal User Manual and Report." That's pure Pascal. 
 It's also quite useless. Your program has to be all in one file, for 
 instance. For another, writing I/O always appends a newline. Try 
 writing binary files with that. There was no way to get at the bit 
 representation of a type. Etc.


 
 That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to D; 
 it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the same, 
 except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more flexible 
 (virtual and named constructors...).


The problem was, in the 80's, pure Pascal was useless and so needed 
dialects. Every Pascal vendor added a boatload of extensions, all 
incompatible with each other. None had enough market share to create a 
de-facto standard.

All this left a huge opening for C, and the rest, as they say, is 
history. The market window closed for Pascal.
Jan 04 2010
next sibling parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. 
 It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what 
 the pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary 
 Pascal is just another procedural systems programming language like 
 C. It has a bit different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), 
 somewhat different rules for some default data types, but it's more 
 or less C wrapped in a syntactic mask.


 Pick up a copy of "Pascal User Manual and Report." That's pure 
 Pascal. It's also quite useless. Your program has to be all in one 
 file, for instance. For another, writing I/O always appends a 
 newline. Try writing binary files with that. There was no way to get 
 at the bit representation of a type. Etc.


 That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to 
 D; it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the 
 same, except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more 
 flexible (virtual and named constructors...).


 
 The problem was, in the 80's, pure Pascal was useless and so needed 
 dialects. Every Pascal vendor added a boatload of extensions, all 
 incompatible with each other. None had enough market share to create a 
 de-facto standard.
 
 All this left a huge opening for C, and the rest, as they say, is 
 history. The market window closed for Pascal.


Yeah, as it was discussed in this thread. I was just posting this, 
because you tell so often about your bad experiences with Pascal.

I context of retard's posting I also found it funny how the history of 
programming languages seems to repeat itself.
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent reply Mike James <foo bar.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:


 grauzone wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. 
 It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination. I fail to see Pascal as a religion. I don't know what 
 the pure Pascal compiler you're talking about is, but ordinary Pascal 
 is just another procedural systems programming language like C. It 
 has a bit different syntax ("begin end" vs "{}" and so on), somewhat 
 different rules for some default data types, but it's more or less C 
 wrapped in a syntactic mask.


 Pick up a copy of "Pascal User Manual and Report." That's pure Pascal. 
 It's also quite useless. Your program has to be all in one file, for 
 instance. For another, writing I/O always appends a newline. Try 
 writing binary files with that. There was no way to get at the bit 
 representation of a type. Etc.


 
 That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to D; 
 it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the same, 
 except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more flexible 
 (virtual and named constructors...).


 
 The problem was, in the 80's, pure Pascal was useless and so needed 
 dialects. Every Pascal vendor added a boatload of extensions, all 
 incompatible with each other. None had enough market share to create a 
 de-facto standard.


Borland Pascal, Borland Pascal with Objects and Borland Delphi became the
de-facto standard. They dropped the ball and Freepascal/Lazarus picked up the
ball. Freepascal now includes templates.


 
 All this left a huge opening for C, and the rest, as they say, is 
 history. The market window closed for Pascal.
Jan 04 2010
parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Mike James:


Freepascal now includes templates.<


I didn't know it. They are for classes only for now, but in future they may add
for records, functions, etc, too. They are named Generics:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refch8.html
It has operator overloading too:
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/refch12.html
(And other things like built-in properties were already present).

FreePascal generics are more limited than D2 templates, but FreePascal has
metaclasses and RTTI that replace some template purposes. Now FreePascal looks
like a quite expressive language, you can probably use it to do most of things
you can do with D :-)

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling next sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
grauzone:

 That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to D; 
 it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the same, 
 except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more flexible 
 (virtual and named constructors...).




About Delphi virtual constructors:
http://www.felix-colibri.com/papers/oop_components/delphi_virtual_constructor/delphi_virtual_constructor.html

About Delphi named constructors:


In Table 2-1 shows a list of some Delphi features:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/delphi/chapter/ch02.html
Beside virtual methods there are dynamic methods too, that are unrelated to


Instead of using the virtual directive, you can also use the dynamic directive.
The semantics are identical, but the implementation is different. Looking up a
virtual method in a VMT is fast because the compiler generates an index
directly into a VMT. Looking up a dynamic method is slower. Calling a dynamic
method requires a linear search of a class's dynamic method table (DMT). If the
class does not override that method, the search continues with the DMT of the
base class. The search continues with ancestor classes until TObject is reached
or the method is found. The tradeoff is that in a few circumstances, dynamic
methods take up less memory than virtual methods. Unless you are writing a
replacement for the VCL, you should use virtual methods, not dynamic methods.
See Chapter 3 for a complete explanation of how dynamic and virtual methods are
implemented.<



There are even metaclasses (from the same document):

A class, too, is a distinct entity (as in Java, but unlike C++). Delphi's
representation of a class is a read-only table of pointers to virtual methods
and lots of information about the class. A class reference is a pointer to the
table. (Chapter 3, Runtime Type Information, describes in depth the layout of
the class tables.) The most common use for a class reference is to create
objects or to test the type of an object reference, but you can use class
references in many other situations, including passing class references as
routine parameters or returning a class reference from a function. The type of
a class reference is called a metaclass.<


In C++/D to do something similar to metaclasses you use templates:
http://marcin.wudarczyk.pl/education/tipstricks/metacls.htm



 The only thing that was really lacking in Delphi are templates. But for 
 compensation, it had powerful RTTI.


About Delphi RTTI, this document is not new (it seems updated to Delphi 4,
that's a bit ancient) but it looks well written:
http://www.blong.com/Conferences/BorConUK98/DelphiRTTI/CB140.htm

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent #ponce <aliloko gmail.com> writes:
 
 That's all gone in modern Pascal dialects. Delphi is very similar to D; 
 it's practically a Pascal version of D. The OOP features are the same, 
 except for some small differences, which make Delphi a bit more flexible 
 (virtual and named constructors...).
 
 The only thing that was really lacking in Delphi are templates. But for 
 compensation, it had powerful RTTI. Try writing a 
 reflection/serialization mechanism in D that's as powerful Delphi's. I 
 bet you won't succeed, not even with D2. (Need to fix some compiler bugs 
 or deficiencies in the area of __traits first.) Even if you succeed, the 
 end result will be probably harder to use. (If that sounds polemic, show 
 me a D library that implements full serialization on 
 Delphi/Java/whatever level, and I'll shut up.)


Other interesting features of Delphi were:
- incredibly fast compilation time allowed by the language, you can almost
develop in release mode
- properties "done right", with zero overhead (but cumbersome to write)
- similar productivity and feeling that D can provide
- very good low-level bit manipulation: absolute prevent all union tricks,
"value" type casts are reinterpret_cast (no way to turn a float into an int
silently), inline-assembly like D
- "Borland fastcall", using the three registers EAX, ECX and EDX
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent reply Ary Borenszweig <ary esperanto.org.ar> writes:
retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
 

 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't
 pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything*
 into the paradigm.


 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored with
 it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
 compiler.

 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny language
 tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the project. I just
 couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the language would
 shut off all the avenues.

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 
 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination.


You don't have an idea how many times I heard the phrase "Please, 
please, let this work" out of a programmer's mouth in front of a computer.
Jan 04 2010
next sibling parent reply retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:50:12 -0200, Ary Borenszweig wrote:


 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
 

 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you
 don't pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram
 *everything* into the paradigm.


 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored
 with it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
 compiler.

 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny
 language tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the
 project. I just couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the
 language would shut off all the avenues.

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It
 so soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of
 Modula II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 
 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your
 imagination.


 
 You don't have an idea how many times I heard the phrase "Please,
 please, let this work" out of a programmer's mouth in front of a
 computer.


Now what does that prove? That the person has religious beliefs or that 
programming languages are religions? My point was, it's just stupid to 
claim that some languages like ML or Iswim are religions. They were 
originally built for scientific use, namely for proving mathematical 
properties of some systems and as a proof of concept. I guess lolcode 
isn't a religion in your book because not only is it useless, it's fun 
unlike most functional languages.
Jan 04 2010
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"retard" <re tard.com.invalid> wrote in message 
news:hhsmop$1aev$5 digitalmars.com...

 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:50:12 -0200, Ary Borenszweig wrote:


 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you
 don't pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram
 *everything* into the paradigm.


 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored
 with it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
 compiler.

 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny
 language tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the
 project. I just couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the
 language would shut off all the avenues.

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It
 so soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of
 Modula II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your
 imagination.


 You don't have an idea how many times I heard the phrase "Please,
 please, let this work" out of a programmer's mouth in front of a
 computer.


 Now what does that prove? That the person has religious beliefs or that
 programming languages are religions? My point was, it's just stupid to
 claim that some languages like ML or Iswim are religions. They were
 originally built for scientific use, namely for proving mathematical
 properties of some systems and as a proof of concept. I guess lolcode
 isn't a religion in your book because not only is it useless, it's fun
 unlike most functional languages.


Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software 
development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages out 
there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!" and *are* 
either intended for everyday use or used by people for everyday use.
Jan 04 2010
parent reply Daniel de Kok <me nowhere.nospam> writes:
On 2010-01-04 19:15:39 +0100, "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> said:

 Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software
 development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages out
 there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!" and *are*
 either intended for everyday use or used by people for everyday use.


Yes, just like some people swear by 'everything is impure' languages, 
and go lengths to achieve immutability (e.g. Java). Why are those 
prefering purity called religious, and those using completely 'impure' 
languages practical?

Pure, partially pure, impure. All regimes can be religious or 
practical, or both.

-- Daniel
Jan 04 2010
parent reply retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:04:13 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:


 On 2010-01-04 19:15:39 +0100, "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> said:

 Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software
 development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages
 out there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!"
 and *are* either intended for everyday use or used by people for
 everyday use.


 
 Yes, just like some people swear by 'everything is impure' languages,
 and go lengths to achieve immutability (e.g. Java). Why are those
 prefering purity called religious, and those using completely 'impure'
 languages practical?
 
 Pure, partially pure, impure. All regimes can be religious or practical,
 or both.


I think quite often the desire for practicality follows the principles of 
fundamentalism. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with this OT talk, 
but even as an atheist I admit that some religions are quite ok. But the 
fundamentalists are almost always dangerous to the persons near them. 
It's quite common to hear things like
 - "Everything must be modeled in UML 2.0"
 - "This development process solves all problems, even the ones 
introduced on the language level"
 - "C++ and template metaprogramming provides extreme optimal performance 
on this problem domain"
 - "Large doses of REST, AJAX, XML, and Web 2.0 cloud will so totally 
save this crappy project"
 - "100% coverage in unit tests is integral part of our process. It 
guarantees delivery of high quality end products"
 - "In clean code functions should accept only one parameter"

Most of the fundamentalist technologies exist - surprise, surprise - only 
in the imperative mainstream programmer world. That world is so full of 
all kinds of pseudo-science that it often makes me vomit. But it's often 
nicer than unemployment..
Jan 04 2010
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
retard wrote:

 Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:04:13 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:
 

 On 2010-01-04 19:15:39 +0100, "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> said:

 Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software
 development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages
 out there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!"
 and *are* either intended for everyday use or used by people for
 everyday use.


 Yes, just like some people swear by 'everything is impure' languages,
 and go lengths to achieve immutability (e.g. Java). Why are those
 prefering purity called religious, and those using completely 'impure'
 languages practical?

 Pure, partially pure, impure. All regimes can be religious or practical,
 or both.


 
 I think quite often the desire for practicality follows the principles of 
 fundamentalism. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with this OT talk, 
 but even as an atheist I admit that some religions are quite ok. But the 
 fundamentalists are almost always dangerous to the persons near them. 
 It's quite common to hear things like
  - "Everything must be modeled in UML 2.0"
  - "This development process solves all problems, even the ones 
 introduced on the language level"
  - "C++ and template metaprogramming provides extreme optimal performance 
 on this problem domain"
  - "Large doses of REST, AJAX, XML, and Web 2.0 cloud will so totally 
 save this crappy project"
  - "100% coverage in unit tests is integral part of our process. It 
 guarantees delivery of high quality end products"
  - "In clean code functions should accept only one parameter"
 
 Most of the fundamentalist technologies exist - surprise, surprise - only 
 in the imperative mainstream programmer world.


Meh. Most of the fundamentalist technologies exist in environments that 
are being used and need improvement.

Andrei
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent Mike James <foo bar.com> writes:
Ary Borenszweig Wrote:


 retard wrote:

 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:19:25 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
 

 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't
 pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything*
 into the paradigm.


 I agree, the old programming-language-as-religion problem. I first ran
 into this when I read the original Pascal book, and became enamored with
 it. I tried doing a modest project in Pascal using a pure Pascal
 compiler.

 80% went smoothly, the other 20% spent wrestling with the nanny language
 tsk-tsking consumed nearly 100% of the time spend on the project. I just
 couldn't get things that had to be done, done, as the language would
 shut off all the avenues.

 When I then picked up K+R C, I never wrote another line of Pascal. It so
 soured me on Pascal that I never got on the later bandwagons of Modula
 II, Delphi, TurboPascal, etc. Never even looked at them.


 
 The programming-language-as-religion problem exists only in your 
 imagination.


 
 You don't have an idea how many times I heard the phrase "Please, 
 please, let this work" out of a programmer's mouth in front of a computer.


But thats not to the God of Languages, thats to the God of Demonstrations...
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent reply dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:
== Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is completely
 in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms,
 for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse yet)
 a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.


I actually think Smalltalk had the better idea.  Java doesn't support any
paradigm
besides OO well, and neither does Smalltalk.  The difference is that, in
Smalltalk, at least everything is an object, so you can do "pure" OO well.  Java
is "almost pure" OO, but it lack of ints, floats, etc. being objects, combined
with its lack of support for any paradigm that works well without ints, floats,
etc. being objects, makes the language feel like a massive kludge, and leads to
debacles like autoboxing to get around this.


being objects is less of an issue because, although it's a wart in the OO
system,
noone is forcing you to use the OO system for **everything**.
Jan 01 2010
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"dsimcha" <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:hhlsk7$2v03$1 digitalmars.com...

 == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is 
 completely
 in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms,
 for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse 
 yet)
 a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.


 I actually think Smalltalk had the better idea.  Java doesn't support any 
 paradigm
 besides OO well, and neither does Smalltalk.  The difference is that, in
 Smalltalk, at least everything is an object, so you can do "pure" OO well. 
 Java
 is "almost pure" OO, but it lack of ints, floats, etc. being objects, 
 combined
 with its lack of support for any paradigm that works well without ints, 
 floats,
 etc. being objects, makes the language feel like a massive kludge, and 
 leads to
 debacles like autoboxing to get around this.


 etc.
 being objects is less of an issue because, although it's a wart in the OO 
 system,
 noone is forcing you to use the OO system for **everything**.


I certainly agree about Java and multiparadign languages, but I never 
understood how, for instance, making the "if" statement an object ever did 
anything but obfuscate Smalltalk and give people warm fuzzies for being 
uber-consistent.
Jan 01 2010
parent reply yigal chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Nick Sabalausky Wrote:


 "dsimcha" <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote in message 
 news:hhlsk7$2v03$1 digitalmars.com...

 == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is 
 completely
 in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all programming paradigms,
 for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't pull a Java or (worse 
 yet)
 a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything* into the paradigm.


 I actually think Smalltalk had the better idea.  Java doesn't support any 
 paradigm
 besides OO well, and neither does Smalltalk.  The difference is that, in
 Smalltalk, at least everything is an object, so you can do "pure" OO well. 
 Java
 is "almost pure" OO, but it lack of ints, floats, etc. being objects, 
 combined
 with its lack of support for any paradigm that works well without ints, 
 floats,
 etc. being objects, makes the language feel like a massive kludge, and 
 leads to
 debacles like autoboxing to get around this.


 etc.
 being objects is less of an issue because, although it's a wart in the OO 
 system,
 noone is forcing you to use the OO system for **everything**.


 
 I certainly agree about Java and multiparadign languages, but I never 
 understood how, for instance, making the "if" statement an object ever did 
 anything but obfuscate Smalltalk and give people warm fuzzies for being 
 uber-consistent.
 
 


Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the easiest
language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of Boolean is much
better, easier to read and more flexiable.  

The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language" features in
the library with little effort and they do not look foreign to the language.
in fact, almost all of smalltalk is implemented in the library and it only has
5 actual keywords.
Jan 02 2010
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.
 
 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look
 foreign to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is
 implemented in the library and it only has 5 actual keywords.



What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?
Jan 02 2010
next sibling parent reply yigal chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright Wrote:


 yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.
 
 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look
 foreign to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is
 implemented in the library and it only has 5 actual keywords.


 
 
 What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?


That's a completely separate issue. Success of any product or idea depends on
many aspects of which technical superiority is only one. I've used Smalltalk
and it is most definitly superior to most other languages including D.  

Compare to cars - the most popular and successful design is that of the
internal combustion engine yet it's the worst design in technical terms, there
are more effecient and much cleaner designs.

compare to OSes - Unix died in the Unix wars and was replaced by a much worse
system called windows which today has over 90% market share. Windows is by far
the worst OS ever and yet this is the design that won. Technically speaking
Linux today is much better and I enjoyed using it but ultimatly my main system
today is windows 7 and not for technical reasons. 

Compare to Java - a mediocre language at best yet very popular and in fact I'd
prefer to use Java over D too beacuse the fact that D is a (much) better
langauge is a tiny aspect of productivity of a programmer. Java has a lot of
amazing tools that support it and a lot of freely available libraries while in
D we still can't have only one standard lib. 
So while it's fun to play with D, for real stuff I'll prefer Java with eclipse
and all the standardized libs that make my life that much more simple.
Jan 03 2010
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
yigal chripun wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:
 

 yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.

 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look
 foreign to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is
 implemented in the library and it only has 5 actual keywords.


 What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?


 
 That's a completely separate issue. Success of any product or idea depends on
many aspects of which technical superiority is only one. I've used Smalltalk
and it is most definitly superior to most other languages including D.  
 
 Compare to cars - the most popular and successful design is that of the
internal combustion engine yet it's the worst design in technical terms, there
are more effecient and much cleaner designs.
 
 compare to OSes - Unix died in the Unix wars and was replaced by a much worse
system called windows which today has over 90% market share. Windows is by far
the worst OS ever and yet this is the design that won. Technically speaking
Linux today is much better and I enjoyed using it but ultimatly my main system
today is windows 7 and not for technical reasons. 
 
 Compare to Java - a mediocre language at best yet very popular and in fact I'd
prefer to use Java over D too beacuse the fact that D is a (much) better
langauge is a tiny aspect of productivity of a programmer. Java has a lot of
amazing tools that support it and a lot of freely available libraries while in
D we still can't have only one standard lib. 
 So while it's fun to play with D, for real stuff I'll prefer Java with eclipse
and all the standardized libs that make my life that much more simple. 


You didn't answer the question. What's your opinion about why Smalltalk 
has failed to catch on?

Andrei
Jan 03 2010
parent yigal chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:


 yigal chripun wrote:

 Walter Bright Wrote:
 

 yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.

 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look
 foreign to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is
 implemented in the library and it only has 5 actual keywords.


 What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?


 
 That's a completely separate issue. Success of any product or idea depends on
many aspects of which technical superiority is only one. I've used Smalltalk
and it is most definitly superior to most other languages including D.  
 
 Compare to cars - the most popular and successful design is that of the
internal combustion engine yet it's the worst design in technical terms, there
are more effecient and much cleaner designs.
 
 compare to OSes - Unix died in the Unix wars and was replaced by a much worse
system called windows which today has over 90% market share. Windows is by far
the worst OS ever and yet this is the design that won. Technically speaking
Linux today is much better and I enjoyed using it but ultimatly my main system
today is windows 7 and not for technical reasons. 
 
 Compare to Java - a mediocre language at best yet very popular and in fact I'd
prefer to use Java over D too beacuse the fact that D is a (much) better
langauge is a tiny aspect of productivity of a programmer. Java has a lot of
amazing tools that support it and a lot of freely available libraries while in
D we still can't have only one standard lib. 
 So while it's fun to play with D, for real stuff I'll prefer Java with eclipse
and all the standardized libs that make my life that much more simple. 


 
 You didn't answer the question. What's your opinion about why Smalltalk 
 has failed to catch on?
 
 Andrei


I thought I did. It's for simillar reasons as in my other examples. Java was a
success because it was offered free of charge with a big supportive environment
- libs, tools, documantation, etc and was promoted havily by Sun.
 Smalltalk OTOH was sold by a few vendors that didn't know how to promote it
and build a vibrant comunity around it. Those vendors didn't supply libs for
common stuff the industry uses and don't forget that one of its goals was to
have an educational system for kids rather than something the industry will
use. 

The industry rarely uses products based on its technical merits anyway - they
don't and shouldn't care what language is technically "better". they care only
for the bottom line. 
that means that Java is the best for the industry:
1) has many existing tools and libs that enhance productivity and reduced the
amount of code that is neeed to be written in house. 
2) there are many Java programmers so it's easy to find better qulity
programmers and pay them less. 
3) the write once run anywhere promise - obviously saves money.
4) Is standardized yet has many vendors - no need to invest when switching
vendor.

BTW, none of the above apply to D.
Jan 03 2010
prev sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
yigal chripun:

 Compare to cars - the most popular and successful design is that of the
internal combustion engine yet it's the worst design in technical terms, there
are more effecient and much cleaner designs.


Most of those alternative designs have one or more flaws, or used to have in
the past. The two-stroke and four-stroke engines (diesel too) are not perfect,
but they don't come from random evolution. Today building hybrid engines, etc,
is better, but you need technologies like supercapacitors, good batteries,
ceramic inserts, good control electronics, good high-performance steel, and so
on and on, that where not available in the past.



 compare to OSes - Unix died in the Unix wars and was replaced by a much worse
system called windows which today has over 90% market share. Windows is by far
the worst OS ever and yet this is the design that won. Technically speaking
Linux today is much better and I enjoyed using it but ultimatly my main system
today is windows 7 and not for technical reasons. 


The Windows95 OS may be worse, but the GUI of XP was much more refined and
usable for non-guru-level users. Things are slowly changing, as Ubuntu GUI gets
a bit better, it eventually will become about as good as Windows95 GUI or
better :-) Most people don't care of a better kernel if the OS interface forces
you to edit small text files spread everywhere that risk breaking your system
at each little error :o)



 Compare to Java - a mediocre language at best yet very popular and in fact I'd
prefer to use Java over D too beacuse the fact that D is a (much) better
langauge is a tiny aspect of productivity of a programmer.<


Compared to D Java is also much safer than D, its compiler gives better error
messages, its GCs are way better, its semantics is better defined and better
enforced, HotSpot is better than even LDC with LLVM and can lead to faster
programs, Java as language is simpler to learn and to use, you can run it in a
browser, it's simpler to add/change parts to a Java program at runtime, its
reflection is better, etc. I like D more, but Java is not bad.

Regarding Smalltalk, its syntax is weird for people that come from C/C++, its
performance can't be compared to the current Java performance. I think that
using txt source files, as in Java, is more compatible with the way many people
have programmed. I don't believe in "idealistic pure" languages, as Smalltalk;


with few other things like C++) looks like the best language (and I think
eventually in few more years it will become free enough to be usable on non
Windows systems too).

Bye,
bearophile
Jan 03 2010
parent reply retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:00:53 -0500, bearophile wrote:


 yigal chripun:
 The Windows95 OS may be worse, but the GUI of XP was much more refined
 and usable for non-guru-level users. Things are slowly changing, as
 Ubuntu GUI gets a bit better, it eventually will become about as good as
 Windows95 GUI or better :-)


Ha, oh really? The fact is, all major desktop environments have their 
usability and technical issues. Ubuntu is a rather small player in this 
game. For instance Apple has been selling Macs really aggressively. KDE4 
is also becoming a serious alternative - Qt *is* very powerful (if not 
best) toolkit for building modern desktop applications.

Now that many intranet and internet applications are being built on web 
(2.0) platform, the choice of OS shouldn't matter. But in reality many 
intranet apps still require IE 6 and ActiveX. Some internet apps only 
work in internet explorer 6 or 7 (wine + unofficial ie packs help in 
this, of course). No matter how good the competitive products are and how 
little they cost (they're free as in beer, as everyone here might know), 
it will take tens of years for people and industries to switch. Even if 
Microsoft had died some years ago and WinXP was the latest windows 
release for some unknown reason, probably the majority (>50% of users) 
would start using alternative OSes in 2030, definitely no sooner.


 Most people don't care of a better kernel if
 the OS interface forces you to edit small text files spread everywhere
 that risk breaking your system at each little error :o)


Most people are dumb as a rock. They think you need MS Office Word for 
writing e-mails. They know that IE6 = internet = computer = email = 
facebook = web = google = browser = virus = something. They buy stuff 
because a salesman tells them to. Usually the salesman recommends buying 
latest Windows, MS Office Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and other interesting 
stuff like the most expensive anti-virus software available when a 
clueless casual user asks anything.


 Compared to D Java is also much safer than D, its compiler gives better
 error messages, its GCs are way better, its semantics is better defined
 and better enforced, HotSpot is better than even LDC with LLVM and can
 lead to faster programs, Java as language is simpler to learn and to
 use, you can run it in a browser, it's simpler to add/change parts to a
 Java program at runtime, its reflection is better, etc. I like D more,
 but Java is not bad.


Don't forget aspectj and other aspect frameworks, interoperatibility with 
other jvm languages.


 Regarding Smalltalk, its syntax is weird for people that come from
 C/C++


I claim that currently this is the main reason for people not adopting 
Smalltalk or any other language. Even if smalltalk was 50% faster than C+
+ and 100% safer, there would be legions of morons how still want to 
stick with C++ or C when building end-user GUI applications. Mainstream 
programmers don't want to use their brain - they're happy with the C 
family syntax and refuse to learn any other syntax. After all, with the 

and many less known languages. Most mainstream programmers also only know 
the parts of these languages that they all share - a nice imperative 
dialect which is very handy for writing ugly, buggy, and badly performing 
business code.
Jan 03 2010
parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
retard wrote:

 Regarding Smalltalk, its syntax is weird for people that come from
 C/C++


 
 I claim that currently this is the main reason for people not adopting 
 Smalltalk or any other language. Even if smalltalk was 50% faster than C+
 + and 100% safer, there would be legions of morons how still want to 
 stick with C++ or C when building end-user GUI applications. Mainstream 
 programmers don't want to use their brain - they're happy with the C 
 family syntax and refuse to learn any other syntax. After all, with the 

 and many less known languages. Most mainstream programmers also only know 
 the parts of these languages that they all share - a nice imperative 
 dialect which is very handy for writing ugly, buggy, and badly performing 
 business code.



Syntax is just syntax, not semantics, and I'm not sure there's any 
particular reason why Smalltalk could not use curly brace syntax. If I 
was the Smalltalk creator, and syntax was the barrier to adopting it, 
I'd change the syntax.

D deliberately uses the C/C++/Java style syntax because that is the most 
popular and well known.
Jan 03 2010
prev sibling parent reply retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:23:36 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:


 yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.
 
 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look foreign
 to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is implemented in the
 library and it only has 5 actual keywords.


 
 
 What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?


The same question could be asked just about any language. If you have 
followed the internet discussion & hype around JVM/.NET languages - these 
are all very young languages and share many aspects. Languages like 
Clojure seem to be doing well.. Why? Charismatic leaders, perhaps? 
"Clojure: Lisp done right" - I don't believe that, but many do. People 
are sheeple. They believe that languages are religions. Marketing 
matters. Technical superiority rarely has much effect.
Jan 03 2010
parent Michael Rynn <michaelrynn optusnet.com.au> writes:
On Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:10:28 +0000, retard wrote:


 Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:23:36 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
 

 yigal chripun wrote:

 Have you ever actually used Smalltalk?? I have used it and it's the
 easiest language to use by far, having conditionals as methods of
 Boolean is much better, easier to read and more flexiable.
 
 The beauty of smalltalk is that you can easily add new "language"
 features in the library with little effort and they do not look
 foreign to the language. in fact, almost all of smalltalk is
 implemented in the library and it only has 5 actual keywords.


 
 
 What's your opinion, then, about why Smalltalk has failed to catch on?


 
 The same question could be asked just about any language. If you have
 followed the internet discussion & hype around JVM/.NET languages -
 these are all very young languages and share many aspects. Languages
 like Clojure seem to be doing well.. Why? Charismatic leaders, perhaps?
 "Clojure: Lisp done right" - I don't believe that, but many do. People
 are sheeple. They believe that languages are religions. Marketing
 matters. Technical superiority rarely has much effect.



I had a quick look to see what Clojure was about, and watched the video 
on the link on the http://clojure.org site. (Video of a talk from QCon on 
State and Identity).

Clojure is designed as better ways to mix imperative and functional parts 
of programs easily "on a local system".  No more messing directly with 
locks, which can have problems. ( which "only experts can get right 
initially, and then its hard to maintain"). 

With multi-processor cores, easily doing parallel programming is becoming 
the future.  We cannot expect as programmers to "stop the world" as in 
iterative-only programming. 


Well it was a good sales talk. 

I found the complicated ways of using indirection to support different 
versions of object instances using shared tree node membership, 
interesting, and the statement that we had better get used to the idea 
that the version being accessed may already be outdated, and the use of 
time relative checks, compare and Set, immutable data, software 
transactional memory (STM).  And Lisp syntax.  But no classic OO 
inheritance. 

A lot of things needed to support concurrency, and Richard Hickey says 
you have to do all of clojures tricks to make it all work. The builtin 
collection facilities are designed with the STM support. Its for JVM or 
CLR.


Most programs, with the exeception of multi-user databases and servers,
massive climate and weather models, maybe a few concurrent threads at 
most.  

Of course we can still get by with fiddling synchronized object locks, 
notify and wait. Its nice if the language has support built in.


I look forward to seeing results of more evolution of D to support 
concurrency, and what will need to change.
Jan 04 2010
prev sibling parent retard <re tard.com.invalid> writes:
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:23:03 +0000, dsimcha wrote:


 == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a a.a)'s article

 "Walter Bright" <newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 digitalmars.com...

 An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:

 http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html


 Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
 completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
 programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't
 pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything*
 into the paradigm.


 
 I actually think Smalltalk had the better idea.  Java doesn't support
 any paradigm besides OO well, and neither does Smalltalk.  The
 difference is that, in Smalltalk, at least everything is an object, so
 you can do "pure" OO well.  Java is "almost pure" OO, but it lack of
 ints, floats, etc. being objects, combined with its lack of support for
 any paradigm that works well without ints, floats, etc. being objects,
 makes the language feel like a massive kludge, and leads to debacles
 like autoboxing to get around this.
 

 etc. being objects is less of an issue because, although it's a wart in
 the OO system, noone is forcing you to use the OO system for
 **everything**.


In Java generics doesn't work with primitive types, in D it does. And 
generics often happens to be the most useful way of providing 
polymorphism in that context. In "pure OOP languages" all primitives are 
objects so normal sub-typing works. That also solves the issue, although 
it has an impact on performance. These are the main reasons why Java 
feels kludgy in this area.
Jan 03 2010