On 11/03/2011 05:53 PM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> - There are many functional programming languages. (Haskell, OCaml,
>> Clean, and for some reason people keep calling Lisp "functional" too.)
>
>    Why did you not mention Lisp?

Ummm... I *did*? It's right there in the quote.

> It's the first, and still considered by
> many to be *The* functional language.

I can't figure out why. Functions are first-class in Lisp, but beyond 
that there's nothing functional about it. (Unless you think "it uses 
lists" has something to do with being functional...)

>> However, Erlang is *the only* one that could be considered "commercially
>> successful", as far as I can tell.
>
>    How about Lisp?

I wasn't aware that there are any multi-million line mission-critical 
production-grade systems written in Lisp. I suppose there might be 
somewhere. I'm certainly not aware of any well-known commercial entities 
telling everybody that they should use Lisp.

>> Suffice it to say, from what little I could discover, I didn't like what
>> I was seeing. Like most commercially successful languages, Erlang is
>> obtuse, complex, ugly and kludgy. Much like C, Java or anything else
>> wildly popular.
>
>    Can you name a programming language that isn't? (Besides Lisp.)

No, I'd say Lisp is kludgy too.

>    And don't say "Haskell". I can understand a Java program much more
> easily than a Haskell one. So much for obtuse, complex and ugly.

There are people who describe mathematical equations as being obtuse, 
complex and ugly. And there are others who describe them as being 
sublimely beautiful, even transcendental. Wanna guess which side I'm on?

Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, so I won't argue about 
this further.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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