David Brown wrote: > On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 04:16:36PM -0800, Tracy R Reed wrote: >> SJS wrote: >>> It'll be interesting to see how well it works. My disbelief is probably >>> founded on encountering scheme as my ... ninth(?) programming language. >>> I was pretty well schooled in the procedural languages by then. . . >> >> That seems to be the big problem with learning a functional language >> after spending years with procedural. You have to be exceptionally >> open-minded to make the switch. That doesn't mean it isn't worth >> making. Reasonable people can disagree on what language is the best >> for doing any particular task but I don't think reasonable people can >> disagree on whether scheme/lisp are worth learning. They are. > > Scheme/lisp are only part of the way toward functional programming > languages. Most programs still rely heavily on mutable data. > > If you really want to learn functional programming, learn Haskell. It > really takes some mind bending, but I found it to be fun, even if not > really useful. It also uses lazy evaluation, where expressions aren't > evaluated until the result is needed. It allows you to easily express > infinite data structures. That way the code that traverses the structure > (which will be a finite part of it) can be kept separate from the code that > generates the structure.
I'm learning Erlang, and for me it seems pretty easy. Maybe that's because my mind hasn't been polluted by learning C and its brethren. Gus -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
