Peter, Reinier, Rob, Thanks for your replies. Sort of makes me feel better; my intuitive feeling was that the most generally useful aspects associated with FP languages are the concurrency model (Actors) and functions as first class objects. Immutable (value) types for messaging coupled with mutable 'entity' types (as actors) seems like quite a compelling model.
- Scott. Rob Dickens wrote: > Hi. Maybe the answer is that you, er, just don't (try to think about > them functionally), because it won't get you anywhere. That is to say, > it's really only the other[1] main idea of functional programming > which may be brought to bear when modelling stateful entities. > > 1 namely, functions as first-class values, according to p49 of the > Scala book (v4) > > On Aug 29, 9:39 pm, Scoot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Apologies if this is somewhat off topic, but I think (hope) the posse >> audience have some useful insights on this. >> >> I'm trying to get my head into functional thinking. I'm sold on the >> principles of immutability and all the attendant advantages; I've >> looked at examples in various languages (erlang, haskell, scala) and >> admired the elegant simplicity of recursion. >> >> What I'm struggling with is how to model real-world domains using >> these principles. Someone (Dijkstra?) once jested stacks were >> invented solely to demonstrate Abstract Data Types; it kind of feels >> like the Fibonacci series is the functional programming equivalent. >> >> What I'm missing are examples from real world domains; like customers >> holding accounts or purchasing products. I want to think about these >> as stateful entities; e.g. the account moving from in credit to >> overdrawn and back. >> >> So: how does one "think" about these things functionally? >> >> I know in scala I can represent them as stateful objects but that's >> sidestepping the issue; how do I think about state - and persistence - >> functionally? Any thoughts/pointers gratefully accepted. >> >> tia, >> Scott. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
