On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 10:49 AM, bill lam <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, 16 May 2009, Raul Miller wrote: >> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:59 PM, bill lam <[email protected]> wrote: >> > I would say 'J is not a language for serious functional programming' >> > since J lacks all features that present in modern fp such as lazy >> > evaluation, infinite list, abstract type, functional compositions >> > other than adverb/conjunction and fork/hook. >> >> And I suppose I would say that "serious functional programming" >> seems to have been rooted in misunderstanding. See notes > > I don't think that I misunderstood. Today (or perhaps from 20 years > ago [1]) FP mean languages that similar to haskell or ml, definitely not > lisp.
I was speaking of the design of "functional programming languages", in terms http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf I did not mean to imply that your characterization of J as a language which does not fit that design was based incorrect. I think you are correct that J does not fit that design. But I think the design itself was misguided (though not entirely useless). I have similar feelings about the design of object oriented databases (which seem to be rooted in a mistake C.J. Date made, when he claimed that objects and relational tables were incompatible). The resulting technology is not useless, but since it is based on a misunderstanding it contains elements which are misguided in character. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
