Stream programming

[Kiuhnm]

On 3/23/2012 22:12, Ethan Furman wrote:
> Kiuhnm wrote:
>> On 3/23/2012 17:33, Nathan Rice wrote:
>>> Given the examples you pose here, it is clear that you are assuming
>>> that the streams are synchronized in discrete time. Since you do not
>>> provide any mechanism for temporal alignment of streams you are also
>>> assuming every stream will have an element at every time point, the
>>> streams start at the same time and are of the same length. Is this
>>> what you want?
>>
>> Yes. I thought that streams as an alternative to functional
>> programming were widely known.
>
> Don't know about widely, but I can say I am unfamiliar with the way you
> are using them.

That's good! It means I'm saying something new (and, hopefully, 
interesting).

>>> This implies that your transformations again produce flows. You
>>> should explicitly state this.
>>
>> Isn't that obvious? BTW, those are not rigorous definitions. I thought
>> I was talking to people who regularly works with streams.
>
> Why would you think that? This list is composed of all types that use
> Python. I've seen occasional discussion of functional programming, but
> I've only seen anything this confusing maybe twice before... granted, I
> don't read *everything*, but I do read quite a bit -- especially the
> stuff that looks like it might be interesting... like "stream
> programming", for example. ;)
>
>
> After the discussion I've seen so far, I still have no idea how I would
> use your code or what it's good for.

The idea is simple. Flows or streams let you be more declarative without 
being too functional :)
In imperative progamming you write statements or commands.
In functional programming (FP) you write expressions.
In streaming programming (SP) you create flows.
Basically, if in FP you write
   h9(h8(h7(.....(h1)....)))
in SP you write
   h1-h2-h3-...-h9
which I greatly prefer because that's the way I think.
I think that SP could be an interesting alternative to FP (in ten years, 
maybe). Mine was just a little experiment.

Kiuhnm