[Haskell-cafe] A Thought: Backus, FP, and Brute Force Learning

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

I should mention that both functional programming in general
and Backus's FP _have_ been influenced by APL, which, while
imperative, strongly encourages "algebraic" combination of
small functions and had (a fixed set of) higher-order "operators".

As for Brute Force Learning by reading imperative code,
I have to say that you _can_ learn a lot that way, but there is
an abundance of imperative code which is utterly opaque.
Come to think if it, I've just taken two days to write 53 lines
of imperative code which requires four more pages to explain
why it exists and why it looks the way it does.  In a functional
language, it would be 2 fairly obvious lines, and I am _not_ kidding.