[Haskell-cafe] Re: Wikipedia on first-class object

[Cristian Baboi]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:03:04 +0200, apfelmus <apfelmus at quantentunnel.de>  
wrote:

> Cristian Baboi wrote:
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_object
>>  The term was coined by Christopher Strachey in the context of  
>> “functions as first-class citizens” in the mid-1960's.[1]
>>  Depending on the language, this can imply:
>> 1.  being expressible as an anonymous literal value
>> 2.  being storable in variables
>> 3.  being storable in data structures
>> 4.  having an intrinsic identity (independent of any given name)
>> 5.  being comparable for equality with other entities
>> 6.  being passable as a parameter to a procedure/function
>> 7.  being returnable as the result of a procedure/function
>> 8.  being constructable at runtime
>> 9.  being printable
>> 10. being readable
>> 11. being transmissible among distributed processes
>> 12. being storable outside running processes
>>  I'll guess that 5,9,12 does not apply to Haskell functions.

> Exactly, together with 10 and 11 (when the distributed processes are on  
> different machines).

> But there is good reason that those things can't be done in Haskell.  
> With extensional equality (two functions are considered equal if they  
> yield the same result on every possible argument) number 5 is  
> undecidable.

I didn't know 5 as a number is undecidable :-)

> Similarly, there cannot be functions

>    print   :: (Int -> Int) -> String
>    compile :: String -> (Int -> Int)
>
> with
>
>    compile . print = id

> A  print  function based on an intensional representation (assembly,  
> byte code, etc.) would have to distinguish extensionally equal functions

>    print f ≠ print g   although   f = g

> which is not allowed.

Ok. I understand that there cannot be pairs like (print,compile) above.
But I was told that compile (quality number 10), can be defined.

About print above, I do not intend to make a Haskell String from a Haskell  
function.
This is why I said something about mixing levels of abstractions.

> More importantly, I don't quite understand your question. If you  
> definitively need 9-12 for a practical problem at hand, then you may  
> want to take a look at the functional language Clean
>
>    http://clean.cs.ru.nl/
>
> which is similar to Haskell but offers 9-12 in some form.

How can be Clean similar to Haskell and at the same time satisfy 9-12 ?
I tryed Clean. I like it very much.

I have some silly little problems with it:
- its only 32 bit
- it doesn't support Unicode
- I don't like those type adnotations. Look as ugly as Lisp () to me.
- it's not free
- the linux version seems abandoned.
- there are some issues with # expressions (let before) that I don't fully  
understand
- the IO seems easyer in Haskell than in Clean

Otherwise I like it better than Haskell.


> In all other cases, an email thread is not a good (often not even  
> successful) way to get a coherent "world view" on Haskell (or on  
> something  else) since this necessarily involves nitpicking  
> philosophical questions. In my experience, interrogating one person in  
> real-time in audio and "interrogating" books are the best ways to do  
> that.

In my experience, different people have different "world views", and one  
cannot get that from books only.


> Concerning books, maybe

>    The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming
>    http://www.cwi.nl/~jve/HR

> is for you.

Thank you.

> More books on

>    http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Books

> You don't have to buy them, borrow them from a library.

I'l try borrow them when I'll be visiting Munich next year, but I don't  
think I'll have enough time to read them.



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