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I think he's refuting weak-men argument. Not quite straw-men because I've heard them being made. Of course it's about modularity, but how do you get modularity
by murbard2 11y ago
I think he's refuting weak-men argument. Not quite straw-men because I've heard them being made.
Of course it's about modularity, but how do you get modularity? How do you safely abstract the internals of libraries? Types and lack of side effects!
It's also about correctness. Most of the time spent writing any complex bit of software is generally spent finding out what's wrong with it.
- the_af 11y agoAgreed. I find Hughes' paper very interesting, but I disagree with him that "you cannot make something more powerful by removing things". Even philosophically this position is weak. It's self-evident to me you can make something more powerful/better by removing things. You can make something better by removing risks. You can make an UI saner by removing the possibility of invalid interactions. You can make art better by removing superfluous details. I still think that types and control of side effects is essential to (good) FP.
- murbard2 11y ago- You can make the Library of Babel better by removing books.[1] - You can make limbs more useful by removing degrees of freedom, simplifying the control task.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16631583 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16631583