5 ms·

ha, I think this is how we got into this mess ;)

• eru 17y ago
  Actually computer guys may write brilliant software--but most of them have historically been weak in coming up with good abstractions. In the last years mathematical abstractions have become more popular. Think of functional programming and other declarative languages. One early example of the same thing have been regular expressions and grammars.
  • jshen 17y ago
    functional only helps when you don't have to deal with things outside of your programs memory space. Functional starts looking the same once you start grabbing stuff from databases, calling rest services, pushing stuff to files, etc
    • eru 17y ago
      You can get a good (simplified) overview of XMonad at this site (http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/01#xmonad_part1_model http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/01#xmonad_part...). They show how to deal with lots a very side-effect happy domain, and still have a nice and clean design.
      • jshen 17y ago
        this isn't an example of pure functional gluing together a bunch of external data sources and sinks.
        • jshen 17y ago
          ah, I see the kool-aid drinkers use the down-vote instead of reasoned debate.
        • eru 17y ago
          Why not? Especially the emphasis on data structures is quite exemplary in my opinion.