I'm intrigued that Python has some functional constructions in the language.

Carl Banks pavlovevidence at gmail.com
Fri May 8 18:22:04 EDT 2009


On May 8, 1:56 pm, namekuseijin <namekusei... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Carl Banks escreveu:
>
> > 2. However, functional programming is cryptic at some level no matter
> > how nice you make the syntax.
>
> When your program is nothing but function definition and function
> application, syntax is meaningless.

For mere function application you could maybe argue that (and it'd be
a stretch), but there is no reasonable way to claim that syntax is
meaningless for defining functions.  Unless you meant "function
declaration", and I think you did because you don't seem to know what
functional programming is.

> It's kinda like scripting, say, Microsoft Word in either Visual Basic,
> Python, Haskell or whatever:

No it's nothing like that at all.

>  you're just calling functions provided by
> the host,

That's not what functional programming means, nor is it remotely
comparable to functional programming.

> barely using any syntax or intrinsic language feature anyway.
>   Any language will do just fine.

Well, that's not true since I found it to be quite a different
experience to invoke Microsoft library functions  in JScript than in
Visual Basic.  (Mostly because it's a PITA even to "barely use any
syntax or intrinsic language feature" of Visual Basic.)

However, that has nothing to do with functional programming.


Carl Banks



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