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Side question: maintenece of functional programs is easier, because you don't need to think about state. Could it be used to create a functional programming la
by petra 9y ago
Side question: maintenece of functional programs is easier, because you don't need to think about state.
Could it be used to create a functional programming language, easily understood by non-programmers or beginners , so they too could take a program and adapt it to their needs ? Does such language exist ?
- darkkindness 9y agoMaybe Pyret? https://www.pyret.org/ https://www.pyret.org/
- colatkinson 9y agoI actually really like the look of that. One of my friends is learning to program (in Python) and has recently taken an interest in FP. Planning to show this to her.
- nickpsecurity 9y agoOne of the folks behind that is also involved in this: http://www.bootstrapworld.org http://www.bootstrapworld.org They're claiming to get good results teaching young people a number of important topics, including coding. They're also either using Pyret or planning to use it.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoIt already exists, MS Excel
- TuringTest 9y agoAlmost anything in the End User Development research field.
- jdmichal 9y agoI don't think state is the problem. I think the visibility of state is a problem. In most programming, state is some nebulous thing that you really only get to see in a debugger. Otherwise, you're left reasoning about what you think the states are and can be. How many bugs trace down to statements like, "This data shouldn't be here." That's why Excel works for so many people -- the internal and intermediate states can be as visible as the user needs or desires them to be. And those users seem to have no problem chaining together multiple cells into what is essentially a very complex function.
- ujal 9y agoLisp is perfectly suited for this task due to the minimal and familiar syntax to non-programmers. Math should be taught in prefix notation if u ask me.
- asdsa5325 9y agoWell, hopefully nobody ever asks you!
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoFamiliar? Seriously?!? That syntax is not familiar to non-programmers. > Math should be taught in prefix notation if u ask me. Perhaps it should, but it's not. Or was this whole post sarcasm, and it was done so well that I missed it?
- Coincoin 9y agoThere must be a name for that, when someone casually says something is simple when it is in fact a very complicated subject. EDIT: After some googling, TIL humblebragging.
- carapace 9y agoYes: Joy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) (Shameless plug for my own implementation: http://joypy.osdn.io/ http://joypy.osdn.io/)
- petra 9y agoCan you please explain why Joy is simple to a non-programmer ? because all i see is verbose language, and i know some programming.
- carapace 9y ago> Can you please explain why Joy is simple to a non-programmer ? I don't know, but I'll try. It's simple, small, and fun. First, everything about it is simpler than most other languages. (It may be the simplest useful language, e.g. "Brainf*ck" is simpler but impractical.) Second, there are many small basis sets of functions that provide Turing-completeness. Meaning that you only have to master a few functions to be able to build any possible function. Third, developing code in Joy is very like a simple puzzle-solving game, it's very fun. I may be teaching it to non-programmers in a kind of seminar or course soon, so if you are really interested in real-world data please check back on the Thun site in a month or two. Feel free to get in contact with me through that site as well.