Why programming languages matter [video]

Post by corinroyal » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

arzke wrote: post #47

epgui wrote: post #34

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> nobody seems to have identified what functional programming is defined as Nobody asked (until now, so thank you for asking!), and this is a fairly well discussed topic for anyone who cares to search! You will probably get a lot of slightly different answers depending on who you ask or where you look, but I think a very strong common thread is "referential transparency". Functional programming gives you that, and th…

> Referential transparency is related to the concept of "function purity" (in the sense that either one usually guarantees the other), which you will often hear people talk about as well. Isn't referential transparency (the property of a function that allows it to be replaced by its equivalent output) a consequence of function purity? In other words: could a pure function not be referentially transparent? Also, I rem…

Post by pdimitar » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #92

pdimitar wrote: post #72

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Same. The dynamic typing helps with prototyping but all MBAs have consistently proven they are NOT willing to have the prototype rewritten in something better later.

I found that it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Post by gumby » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #85

gumby wrote: post #78

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It’s simply a reflection of the immaturity and terribleness of the state of the art in programming languages. People eventually got around to things like restricting bytes to be eight bits, using a standard character set, and so on. Eventually we will find some language factors that “stick” (e.g. abandon the stupid distinction between statements and expressions) which will become baseline and the space of variation w…

Yeah, your comment is likely the answer. I am just bitter why is all that happening so darned slow. I really hoped that 22 years in my career I would've seen certain problems disappear forever (as in, be solved, formalized, nailed, and never ever discussed again). But alas, nope.

Post by sidlls » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

slotrans wrote: post #75

sidlls wrote: post #19

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"FP" camps tend to come in two flavors: "I'm a mathematician writing a computer program, and all problems will be made to look like math problems even if it means the program becomes an inscrutable mess of types and dense syntax" and "functional-ish idioms are included". The latter is useful, sometimes, for cloud computing and parallel computation; the former tends to have too many problems (slow build, slow executio…

Interesting. Functional programming is the only strategy I've seen be successful at building business software. (Hint: you can do FP in Java and it's not even awkward, and SQL is inherently functional).

Post by arzke » Sat, Oct 28, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

corinroyal wrote: post #91

arzke wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Referential transparency is related to the concept of "function purity" (in the sense that either one usually guarantees the other), which you will often hear people talk about as well. Isn't referential transparency (the property of a function that allows it to be replaced by its equivalent output) a consequence of function purity? In other words: could a pure function not be referentially transparent? Also, I rem…

"Could a pure function not be referentially transparent?" Yes there are pure functions which are not referentially transparent. A pure function with side effects, such as printing a result to standard output, is not referentially transparent. You can't replace the function with it's return value, since that doesn't replicate the printing side effect.