[Haskell-cafe] Re: New slogan... (A long speculation)

[jerzy.karczmarczuk at info.unicaen.fr]

An anonymous called ok writes: 

> jerzy.karczmarczuk wrote [about "R"]:
>> ... This is not a functional language.
>> There is some laziness (which looks a bit like macro-processing),  sure.
> 
> There is no macro processing in R (or S).

I know I've been superficial, but, please, *try* to understand my point.
There is a cheap (not always) way of making everything "lazy", by
rewriting. If an expression is the argument of a function, what is passed
is the representation of this expression. This gets evaluated in the context
of the caller function, although perhaps in the environment of the argument
itself, if there are external references. It is something *similar* to
macros, and it is more or less what I understood from my - admittedly
weak - knowledge of R, S, etc. (Frankly, I do not know them enough to
make the difference).
But this is not the same as the laziness - realization of the normal
order of evaluation, call by name (need), etc. 

>> The manual speaks about promises and about forcing them. But, at  the 
>> same time we read that the call by value IS the protocol.
> 
> That is a misreading.  Paragraph 2 of 4.3.3 says 
> 
> 	The semantics of invoking a function in R argument are
> 	call-by-value. ... 
> 
> But that is NOT to be read as "strict", but as contrasting with
> "call-by-reference".

There is a difference between call by name, and by reference. 

> ... you didn't say that there were
> no *pure* lazy dynamically typed languages, only that there were no
> lazy dynamically typed languages. 

Right. But then, laziness *AND* side effects may put you in a nice mess...
Near your favourite 4.3.3 there are warnings against using functions with
side effects, since the arguments may not be evaluated. Now, the discussion
began with ideas how to advertize *functional* languages, not packages with
dangerous, non-formalizable semantics, I thought we would agree on this
point. OF COURSE, there are untyped languages with suspended evaluation.
Snobol had "unevaluated expressions", Icon has "co-expressions", etc. But
if the merits of FL include some protection against errors, issued from
enforcing a concrete programming discipline, "R" doesn't seem to me a good
example.
But you are right in principle, there are languages with "a form of lazy
evaluation", as the R manual delicately says... 


>> I don't see how to make co-inductive
>> constructions, infinite streams, etc.
> 
> I don't know what co-inductive constructions are.

OK, try to code in R the list [0,1,2,3, ...] using a co-recursive data
definition, in Haskell: 

integs = 0 : (ones + integs) where ones = 1 : ones 

and where (+) acts on lists element-wise. This may be esoteric for most
of readers here, but I happen to use such constructions, or worse... 

Jerzy Karczmarczuk