3 ms·

Erlang is not purely functional.

by BasDirks 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
We could also say it's the leading FP language that starts with "H"...
- jrockway 16y ago
  We could, but we didn't.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Obviously I underestimated the huge importance of being purely functional. What other purely functional languages compete for Haskell's attention share?
    - eru 16y ago
      E.g. Clean. And perhaps Curry. (Though Curry is logical-functional and nowadays compiles down to Haskell.) There are also Spreadsheets, which are also purely functional, and even more popular to say the least but not leading. (The problem is that you can not define your own functions in Spreadsheets (without using imperative languages like Visual Basic).)
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        I would love a spreadsheet where the functions could be written in Lisp (or something less dysfunctional than spreadsheetese). And also one where a cell could contain any value (range of cells, functions...)
        eru 16y ago
        SPJ also wrote a paper on Excel (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/excel/excel.htm http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers...).
    - BasDirks 16y ago
      Miranda, Clean, etc.
- grav1tas 16y ago
  Haskell is a purely functional language in this sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purely_functional http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purely_functional Haskell has taken functional purity and ran with it. It's proof that you can eliminate side effects (sans the sin bin) and still actually get things done. The benefits of this can be seen in the papers written by SPJ, Wadler, etc. Moreover some features from Haskell/FP have influenced the mainstream programming community (Java generics). As far as I know Erlang is not purely functional, nor does it try to be. On top of that, I think Erlang's emphasis is more on the actor model / message passing than it is on functional programming. That's my take at least.

Erlang is not purely functional.

rbanffy 16y ago

We could also say it's the leading FP language that starts with "H"...

jrockway 16y ago
We could, but we didn't.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Obviously I underestimated the huge importance of being purely functional. What other purely functional languages compete for Haskell's attention share?
  - eru 16y ago
    E.g. Clean. And perhaps Curry. (Though Curry is logical-functional and nowadays compiles down to Haskell.) There are also Spreadsheets, which are also purely functional, and even more popular to say the least but not leading. (The problem is that you can not define your own functions in Spreadsheets (without using imperative languages like Visual Basic).)
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I would love a spreadsheet where the functions could be written in Lisp (or something less dysfunctional than spreadsheetese). And also one where a cell could contain any value (range of cells, functions...)
      - eru 16y ago
        SPJ also wrote a paper on Excel (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/excel/excel.htm http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers...).
  - BasDirks 16y ago
    Miranda, Clean, etc.
grav1tas 16y ago
Haskell is a purely functional language in this sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purely_functional http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purely_functional Haskell has taken functional purity and ran with it. It's proof that you can eliminate side effects (sans the sin bin) and still actually get things done. The benefits of this can be seen in the papers written by SPJ, Wadler, etc. Moreover some features from Haskell/FP have influenced the mainstream programming community (Java generics). As far as I know Erlang is not purely functional, nor does it try to be. On top of that, I think Erlang's emphasis is more on the actor model / message passing than it is on functional programming. That's my take at least.