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

[Mark T.B. Carroll]

Magnus Therning <magnus at therning.org> writes:
(snip)
> Sequential thinking would be related to procedural programming, that is
> ordering of statements are important but there's no state.  Functional
> programming is declarative, no order and no state.  So, to be strict I'd
> say that sequential form _is_ non-functional.  At least if FOLDOC is
> correct and I read and understood things properly.
(snip)

You've completely lost me here. Order is /very/ important in functional
programming. Consider function composition:

Prelude> ((+1) . (*2)) 5
11
Prelude> ((*2) . (+1)) 5
12

There we have sequencing, and the computation has intermediate state.
There's nothing non-functional about the above.

(snip)
> The world has state!  Just see what a "stink" that has created in the
> pure functional language camp!
(snip)

Mmmm. Monads deal with that very nicely, I think, but there's a way to
go yet.

-- Mark