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Given the facts that functional programming has been all the rage lately, and that advocates of functional programming tend to emphasize its mathematical roots,
by thebear 12y ago
Given the facts that functional programming has been all the rage lately, and that advocates of functional programming tend to emphasize its mathematical roots, I would find it interesting to get Donald Knuth's take on the subject. Web search came up empty for me. Does anybody know of any statements he's made on functional programming?
- laichzeit0 12y agoSome quotes of Knuth on functional programming: "Out of the ~250 programs I wrote last year, 2-3 would have benefited from being written in a functional style." "With 1 or even 2 hands tied behind your back it’s hard to do anything dangerous." I remember looking this up once and couldn't find much. I guess he figures everything that can be written in functional style can be written in imperative style so why bother.
- Athas 12y agoMost algorithms guys don't seem to be that enthusiastic about functional programming. My personal theory is that functional programming is more rooted in abstract logic, which isn't what algorithms is really about.
- jahewson 12y agoHe famously defended the GOTO statement and mostly writes programs in MIX assembly or Pascal. He seems pretty old school when it comes to programming.