4 ms·
You're still a few layers above the truly fundamental issue. Python's sin is that it has statements at all.
by blasdel 17y ago
You're still a few layers above the truly fundamental issue.
Python's sin is that it has statements at all.
- apphacker 17y agoCan you explain what you mean by this please?
- kevindication 17y agoHe's likely arguing against any non-Functional Language. "Purely functional" Lisp has no statements, side-effects, etc, for instance.
- bad_user 17y agoNo, he's probably arguing in favor of expressions (i.e. stuff that returns values). Smalltalk has expressions everywhere, with control blocks being just closures passed to methods on objects ... a < b ifTrue: [^'A is less than B'] ifFalse: [^'A is greater or equal to B'] > "Purely functional" Lisp has no statements, side-effects, etc, for instance. Such a Lisp also has no users.
- ekiru 17y agoAnd no implementations.
- lmkg 17y agoIncorrect: ACL2, an industry-standard automated theorem-prover, is written in a side-effect-free variant of Common Lisp. It has both an implementation and users, including users outside of academia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACL2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACL2
- moe 17y agoI guess both (no implementations, no users) were meant in relative terms, and in that light they describe reality pretty well. Hands up, who has heard of ACL2 before?
- rbanffy 17y agoI did. In fact, I am appalled so few people, apparently, heard of it.
- jrockway 17y agoAny programming language that can't be cut-n-pasted from fifty different websites to make my SQL-injection-rich AJAX social awesome NoSQL site just isn't worth knowing. Theorem proving -- you ain't gonna need it! What's next, you're going to tell me you write unit tests? Hahahahah.
- rbanffy 17y agoIn theory, at least, I wouldn't need them for I proof the program is correct ;-)
- sigstoat 17y agome. i've even used similar tools.
- technomancy 17y agoThere's no reason why there should be two kinds of things code can be made up of. (statements vs expressions) In a well-designed language, everything that is a statement in Python would just be implemented as an expression that returns nil.
- rbanffy 17y agoInteresting. I was under the impression that def x(a):... was only a pretty way to say x = function(a)... I have to agree print is a weird thing, but what other statements bother you so much?