[Haskell-cafe] Re: A few ideas about FRP and arbitrary access in time

[sinelaw]

On Mar 7, 1:01 am, Peter Verswyvelen <bugf... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 8:45 PM, sinelaw <jones.noa... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But isn't Lucid Synchrone essentially discrete-timed? Also, events
>
> Maybe reality itself can also be modeled using  discrete timesteps? If
> so, then a discrete clock calculus might make a lot of sense.  I don't
> know much about theoretical physics - I think general relativity still
> is the "best" model for time, and it's continuous in that model - but
> maybe the people with a PhD in physics know more about it :-)

I don't think a deep knowledge of physics is what we lack here, at
least for the question of continuous vs. discrete time. Maybe the best
physical model for nature really does involve discrete time steps.
However, for our everyday experiences (and maybe for anything that's
not on a the tiny quantum scale?) continuous time is the most natural
model to follow. And when modeling changing values such as mouse
position (the perpetual example...), animations, sound, etc.
continuous time seems much more natural.

Don't forget to check out the link Conal posted, his short blog post
about the subject: http://conal.net/blog/posts/why-program-with-continuous-time/