Re: OT: functional languages (was: Politics of Java)

[Robert.Land@t-online.de (Robert Land)]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 11:23:43AM -0500, Derrick 'dman' Hudson wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 03:17:42PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> | also sprach Nori Heikkinen <nori@sccs.swarthmore.edu> [2002.12.13.1443 +0100]:
> | > what do you mean by "functional"?  even though i have quite limited
> | > experience with it, i've certainly seen plugins for the GIMP and
> | > things written in it.  Or maybe that was scheme.
> | 
> | while C is an imperative language, Erlang is a functional or
> | procedural language. (correct me if i am wrong, folks).
> 
> "imperative" and "procedural" are the same thing, and C is a prime
> example.  It is such because the structure of a C program is a
> collection of procedures which start with "main".  Each procedure is a
> linear list of statements to be executed in order.

Could you specify a "linear list" more clearly? - the 
contrary would be a "nonlinear list" which on the first
view seems to be self-contradictory.

Robert








> 
> | it has no loops, assignments, variables or whatever.
> | 
> | Since Lisp is very similar, I was wondering if it's also "functional"...
> 
> Lisp is "functional".  The functional paradigm is based entirely on
> functions.  A function receives some input values (arguments) and
> returns some value.  It is based heavily on discrete mathmatics and
> recursion.
> 
> The other two categories of programming languages are OO
> (object-oriented) and Logic.  Python, C++ and Java are OO languages.
> Prolog is a logic based language.
> 
> -D
> 
> -- 
> Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
> and your plans will succeed.
>         Proverbs 16:3
>  
> http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/