On Apr 3, 2009, at 10:24 AM, John Cowan wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Chas Emerick <cemer...@snowtide.com> > wrote: > >> There's no doubt that in every application-oriented context I've >> seen, >> you can get the job done given the tools that scala and clojure >> provide, absent contrived examples. > > Languages with proper tail-calling are a different paradigm from those > that don't provide it, or do so only as an optimization (like gcc). > If we don't have tail-calls in our repository of techniques, we simply > don't *see* the opportunities to use them, like patients with damage > to the visual cortext, who don't complain of being blind because they > have lost the very concept of seeing. It's surprising that so modest > a change can work such a vast transformation in thinking, but it does, > just like the difference between having only subroutines and having > coroutines as well. I agree completely. My only point was that many, many tasks have no reason to use techniques that require anything more than locally- recursive fns. Of course, YMMV depending on your context and specialization. - Chas --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JVM Languages" group. To post to this group, send email to jvm-languages@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to jvm-languages+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
