On Thu, 2004-04-22 at 11:38, Grant Robinson wrote: > In my opinion, functional programming can be extremely powerful. Or > rather, the language features you get with most functional programming > languages _are_ extremely powerful, allowing functional programming to > reach a lofty peak. Specifically, the ability to create functions on > the fly as either anonymous or named and return them from function calls > opens new worlds of possibility. It could allow you to have a truly > dynamic program. Let's say you have a text editor written in a language > that supports "first class" functions. You could allow the user to > change the function that gets called when doing searching so they could > make a nice regular-expression search dialog. Don't like another > feature of the program? Write a new one and swap it on the fly. For > some crazy/cool examples of this, go check out Squeak[1]. So, new > functions based on user input would be one powerful feature of > first-class functions. Also, the ability to pass along true functions > to methods is very cool as well. With a little bit of imagination, the > features found in most functional languages can allow a lot of really > elegant solutions to problems that would be difficult, if not > impossible, to accomplish with C++ or Java.
Isn't squeak smalltalk? Sounds like what you are describing can fit both functional programming or truly object-oriented programming (where the system, not just the language syntax is oo). Say what you want about OO, but if the whole system were OO throughout, then this type of thing you describe would be very cool. Michael > > Well, that's enough for now. Any other takers? > > Grant > > > [1] http://www.squeak.org/ > > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
