[Haskell-cafe] Re: Channel9 Interview: Software Composability and theFu ture of Languages

[Yitzchak Gale]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
>> FP way is to represent everything as
>> function, imperative way is to represent everything as algorithm.

Magnus Therning wrote:
> Neither way may be "natural", but imperative thinking is extremely
> common in society, I'd say much more than "functional" thinking.  Just
> think of cooking recipes, IKEA instructions, all the algorithms taught
> in math classes in grade school.

Those are not imperative thinking - they are sequential
thinking. There is nothing non-functional about describing
an algorithm in sequential form.

Imperative means requiring that the steps always be
followed exactly. People do not follow the steps of a
recipe exactly - they just use the recipe to understand
what needs to be prepared. Same with your other examples.

That's why I think that the oposite is true - declarative style
is more natural. Just describe what you want to be computed.
If that is best described as a sequence of steps, fine, if not, not.
But in either case, you are not forcing a CPU to follow
the steps blindly.

-Yitz