Re: relative complement?

On 28 mrt, 23:49, paul c <anonym..._at_not-for-mail.invalid> wrote:

> Even when I've used
> merely procedural languages (ie., without multiple-assignment),

Procedural-or-not is completely orthogonal to supporting-MA-or-not.

Tutorial D is _entirely_ procedural, yet it fully supports MA.

> I've
> always found putting statements in order to be the second-hardest and
> sometimes slowest part of it all (deciding what to do is the hardest
> part).  What I like about multiple assignment is the idea of
> 'simulataneous' statements and I wonder why not have programs where all
> statements are simultaneous and statement order doesn't matter.

Because in real-life(TM) there are situations where order-of- assignment does matter. And therefore in our programs too, which are ultimately about nothing else than "maintaining a (data) state which can be regarded as a "model" for real-life", there are indeed situations in which order-of-assignment does matter.

> Personally I think every dimension that can be removed from a
> programming language is to the good.  I don't think I'd mind leaving it
> up to an environment to determine how a program's actions are to be
> recorded even if CJ Date might call that 'cheating'

I think what CJD calls 'cheating' in the context of the discussion subject of "functional languages", is the fact that those languages _CLAIM_ to "involve no variables and no assignments at all", while if you go look "under the covers", you inevitably find out that that claim is a lie.

The "functional" quality of a "functional" program is that it "does nothing else but generate a result". Note that I used the word "generate" and _NOT_ the word "record" !!! A functional program can "generate" the number three as a result, and that's it. You can look at it, and note that the result is the number three, but _AS SOON AS YOU DO ANYTHING TO ACTUALLY RECORD_ that result (such as assigning it to some portion of the value of a DBVAR), you are outside the realm of "true" functional programming !!! Received on Sat Apr 02 2011 - 17:49:58 CEST