[Haskell-cafe] Reddy on Referential Transparency

Chris Dornan chris at chrisdornan.com
Tue Jul 31 21:57:03 CEST 2012


Uday Reddy has followed up with another substantial and interesting post on referential transparency here:

    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/210835/what-is-referential-transparency/11740176#11740176

The thrust of his argument appears to be that functional programmers have created a lot of confusion around the ideas of referential transparency. I sympathize but I think he is going too far. 

As I see it, while the very close association of functional programming and related concepts with referential transparency may have led to some confusion around the concept that doesn't mean that the specific means that functional programmers have been using to increase (classically understood) RT in functional programs is somehow invalid.

Reddy has responded to my comment here

    http://stackoverflow.com/a/11680011/306550

and I have followed up in turn.

Chris




More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list