functional programming

[Tres Seaver]

In article <slrn8bgpel.hpd.wtanksle at hawking.armored.net>,
William Tanksley <wtanksle at hawking.armored.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Feb 2000 03:08:26 -0500, Tim Peters wrote:
>>[Neel Krishnaswami, writes some unusual stuff about the Joy language,
>> then recants]
>
>>> Augh! I just realized I screwed up the names. Joy, while an
>>> excellent and cool language (it's a functional Forth, more
>>> or less), is fully and totally 100% Turing-complete.
>
>>Joy is both much more and much less <wink> than a functional Forth.  It's
>>both lovely & strange;
>
>Agreed.
>
>>e.g., I'm not sure I've bumped into a language before
>>where it's considered natural (as opposed to merely possible, and with great
>>strain) to write an *anonymous* recursive function.
>
>I think you've bumped into Forth before, which does allow that.  It looks
>like this:
>
>:noname  endcase IF do-endcase ELSE RECURSE THEN ;
>
>:NONAME defines a nameless word.  I believe this was added in the ANSI
>standard, though, so that may have been after your time.
>
>But yes, Forthers don't traditionally peel off nameless recursions that
>commonly, while Joy's style seems to encourage it.
>
>>> The language that I was /actually/ talking about is Charity,
>>> which is a categorical programming language invented at the
>>> University of Calgary:
>
>>> http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/projects/charity/home.html
>
>>New one on me -- thanks!  I see it shares category theory's fondness for
>>wholesale invention of impenetrable terminology too <wink>.  Alas, doesn't
>>look like an active project anymore.
>
>Excellent!  I'll certainly have to study it.
>
>Hmm, Charity's death seems to contradict II Corinthians 13.  Maybe it's
>not really dead.
>
>>die-young-and-leave-a-good-looking-corpse-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>if-I-have-not-charity-I-am-nothing-ly y'rs

No, you are a clanging gong. :)

Ubi-caritas-et-amor'ly,

Tres.
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Tres Seaver           tseaver at palladion.com       713-523-6582
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