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These all exist, you just don't agree with them being reasonable: Scala, Common Lisp, C++, D, Clojure, F#, OCaml, Kotlin, etc. Those could all count or not dep

These all exist, you just don't agree with them being reasonable: Scala, Common Lisp, C++, D, Clojure, F#, OCaml, Kotlin, etc. Those could all count or not depending on your subjective opinion. The truth is, it is difficult to create the perfect language, and any sufficiently complete language will always start to have part of it that suffer in exchange.

catnaroek 9y ago
> Scala, Common Lisp, C++, D, Clojure, F#, OCaml, Kotlin, etc. Out of those, only OCaml really provides “reasonable” support for functional programming. The ability to manipulate compound values (say, lists or trees) directly, without using objects having a queryable physical identity, is of course a prerequisite. > it is difficult to create the perfect language, and any sufficiently complete language (...) Maybe the excessive amount of features is the problem in the first place.
- tome 9y ago
  F# allows you to distinguish values by identity?
  - catnaroek 9y ago
    You can always query the identity of the .NET object that underlies a putative compound value.
- stewbrew 9y ago
  While OCaml might be the most reasonable in theory, AFAIK opam on Windows still doesn't work. Also its standard library is too minimal for my liking.
  - loup-vaillant 9y ago
    User catnaroek was only talking about support for Functional programming. And they're right: it's hard to reasonably support typed functional programming without sum types. And we're talking about a language dammit, not libraries or package managers. Let's have a good language first, then build the tools around it.
    - catnaroek 9y ago
      It's even worse: it's hard to reasonably support functional programming, typed or untyped, when list and tree values aren't directly expressible in the language's semantics. If you need a social convention not to query physical object identities, you have already lost.
  - catnaroek 9y ago
    The lack of a good standard library can always be fixed: write one. OTOH, language semantics issues can't be fixed without redefining the language, invalidating all code that has already been written in it.

catnaroek 9y ago

> Scala, Common Lisp, C++, D, Clojure, F#, OCaml, Kotlin, etc. Out of those, only OCaml really provides “reasonable” support for functional programming. The ability to manipulate compound values (say, lists or trees) directly, without using objects having a queryable physical identity, is of course a prerequisite. > it is difficult to create the perfect language, and any sufficiently complete language (...) Maybe the excessive amount of features is the problem in the first place.

tome 9y ago
F# allows you to distinguish values by identity?
- catnaroek 9y ago
  You can always query the identity of the .NET object that underlies a putative compound value.
stewbrew 9y ago
While OCaml might be the most reasonable in theory, AFAIK opam on Windows still doesn't work. Also its standard library is too minimal for my liking.
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  User catnaroek was only talking about support for Functional programming. And they're right: it's hard to reasonably support typed functional programming without sum types. And we're talking about a language dammit, not libraries or package managers. Let's have a good language first, then build the tools around it.
  - catnaroek 9y ago
    It's even worse: it's hard to reasonably support functional programming, typed or untyped, when list and tree values aren't directly expressible in the language's semantics. If you need a social convention not to query physical object identities, you have already lost.
- catnaroek 9y ago
  The lack of a good standard library can always be fixed: write one. OTOH, language semantics issues can't be fixed without redefining the language, invalidating all code that has already been written in it.