Re: Declarative constraints in practical terms

From: Marshall Spight <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 1 Mar 2006 08:26:23 -0800
Message-ID: <1141230382.968057.33240@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

vc wrote:
> ralphbecket_at_gmail.com wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, there
> > is no useful mathematical intepretation of an imperative program.
>
> It's a fascinating statement in the light of more than 40 years of
> denotational semantics history for imperative languages

Just in case anyone didn't quite get what VC was saying here:

It is not the case that there is no useful mathematical interpretation of an imperative program. Denotational semantics does exactly this.

I think there is some validity to what Ralph is saying, but he said it a bit too strongly. It is certainly *easier* to reason about the semantics of a pure functional program. But as VC points out, it is certainly *possible* to reason about the semantics of an imperative program.

Marshall Received on Wed Mar 01 2006 - 10:26:23 CST