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Hi Mike, Thanks for your thoughts. I agree that functional languages are quite useful. But I think the problem is, many of the underlying hardware architectures are von Neumann based. von Neumann machines work best with imperatives programs (languages). I think building machine architectures which can support functional paradigm is challenging ... On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:05 PM, Michael Kay <mike@s...> wrote: > There are no applications that NEED imperative programming (functional > programming has provably the same computational power). Whether things are > more EASILY done that way is in large measure a matter of your skills and > experience. (I remember working with programmers from an older generation > who claimed coding was easier if they used GOTO statements.) There are one > or two things I still find easier in imperative languages - notably some > graph-walking applications - but they are few and far between. Many problems > that appear to be so complex that you need an imperative language turn out, > on examination, to be complex only BECAUSE you are using an imperative > language. > > Of your three examples, one of my clients builds complex workflow > applications entirely in XSLT/XQuery and it's remarkable how the logic is > simplified by doing it this way. One of the attractions is that a functional > language like XSLT or LISP encourages you to think about program and data in > a more unified way, which is really helpful when building a workflow engine. > For example, it's natural to think about a set of rules written in an XML > vocabulary being translated dynamically into an XSLT stylesheet. > > Game programming and GUI programming are a different question because your > choice of language is heavily dictated by the data you are working with. XML > languages are good at manipulating XML, they are not so good at manipulating > images. But functional languages such as Haskell are certainly used for > implementing "strategy" games such as chess. > > Michael Kay > http://www.saxonica.com/ -- Regards, Mukul Gandhi
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