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Thanks for the additional references (Yes, I should have mentioned Amir's work also). A good basic point is that the central ideas of "reasoning with time" go b

Thanks for the additional references (Yes, I should have mentioned Amir's work also). A good basic point is that the central ideas of "reasoning with time" go back into the early 60s and -- unfortunately -- did not get into the mainstream thought patterns of everyday computing. Terms often lose their meanings as they become religions and more rigid choices and styles. The two in question here are certainly "object-oriented" and "functional programming"!

pron 10y ago
> Terms often lose their meanings as they become religions and more rigid choices and styles. The two in question here are certainly "object-oriented" and "functional programming"! Absolutely, especially when they're vague. But I still think that the synchronous or temporal-logic based languages (which I love!) are very much distinct from FP (at least in the Haskell "tradition"), although they share with each other -- and not with the classical imperative approach -- the explicitness of state transitions: the synchronous/TL model with its clocks/steps, and the FP model with its (hideous) monads. They also "feel" very different (Esterel/Céu and even TLA+ feel more imperative than functional). It is not surprising that the killer-app for the FP approach is compilers (and other code analysis tools), while the killer-app for synchronous/TL approach is reactive systems, two application classes that are at the opposite, extreme ends of Pnueli's (I think) classification of programs (transformational, interactive and reactive).
- alankay1 10y ago
  I don't identify the general notion of "functional programming" with any particular language, including Haskell. I stay with the "idea of a function" as a reliable mapping. Similarly, I don't identify the general notion of "object-oriented" (as I characterized it long ago) with any particular language. Both of these terms have now been "colonized" and their meanings changed, etc.

pron 10y ago

> Terms often lose their meanings as they become religions and more rigid choices and styles. The two in question here are certainly "object-oriented" and "functional programming"! Absolutely, especially when they're vague. But I still think that the synchronous or temporal-logic based languages (which I love!) are very much distinct from FP (at least in the Haskell "tradition"), although they share with each other -- and not with the classical imperative approach -- the explicitness of state transitions: the synchronous/TL model with its clocks/steps, and the FP model with its (hideous) monads. They also "feel" very different (Esterel/Céu and even TLA+ feel more imperative than functional). It is not surprising that the killer-app for the FP approach is compilers (and other code analysis tools), while the killer-app for synchronous/TL approach is reactive systems, two application classes that are at the opposite, extreme ends of Pnueli's (I think) classification of programs (transformational, interactive and reactive).

alankay1 10y ago
I don't identify the general notion of "functional programming" with any particular language, including Haskell. I stay with the "idea of a function" as a reliable mapping. Similarly, I don't identify the general notion of "object-oriented" (as I characterized it long ago) with any particular language. Both of these terms have now been "colonized" and their meanings changed, etc.