nemesis <nam### [at] nospam-gmailcom> wrote:
> Funnily enough, and except for the syntatic abstraction, my example
> dealt only with function definition and function application.  I thought
> those concepts were flying around for ages now.
>
> well, ok, functions returning functions is not generally mainstream...

Nor is functional programming in general.

Sure, Pascal has functions. Basic has functions. In C, the whole program is
comprised of functions, and the methods omnipresent in its heirs like C++ and
Java can be seen as another flavor of the same thing.

But if you look closer at these languages, you will find that those functions
are still both defined and used in an imperative fashion. (And all of these
languages actually have not only functions, but also procedures, that don't
return a value at all but just cause side effects. Even C has "functions" that
return "void", i.e. nothing.) It's only recently that design patterns borrowed
from functional programming are gaining popularity.

> Scheme is often taught in first year compsci courses because of its
> simplicity:  function definition and function application is all there
> really is to it, predefined syntatic details is minimal.  So, I feel
> astonished when people find it overwhelming.

Maybe it's a bit like Go: The rules are mind-boggingly simple. But winning a
game of Go takes more than knowing the rules.

And first years compsci courses are given to people who have time to dig into
new concepts. Many programmers I know don't come from a compsci background. And
you don't learn functional programming in places where there's work to do. Not
typically, at least.

> That said, I wasn't *seriously* proposing Scheme for povray's scripting
> language in the first place

I never really assumed you were ;)

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