[Haskell-cafe] Hyper-recursion?

[Sergiu Ivanov]

Hi Lawrence,

Thus quoth  Lawrence Bottorff  at 04:56 on Tue, Jan 17 2017:
>
> I harp on all this because if Haskell is stateless/immutable and in
> total disregard of any underlying memory field, then it seems it
> should progress to hyper-recursion.

The characteristics you are putting forward are generally attributed to
declarative programming (kinda): loosely put, programming in which you
describe your intentions instead of describing how they should actually
be implemented.

While Haskell falls rather heavily within declarative programming, some
(theoretically proven undecidability) issues prevent it from entirely
having the mentioned characteristics.


On the other hand, hyper-recursion seems to be an informal metaphor
overhanging a couple formal concepts (fixed points, corecursion, but not
only).  Haskell aims to be a "well formalised" language, so while it can
handle fixed points and corecursion, it cannot handle some abstractions
which are too loose and therefore difficult to formalise (but still
useful as tools for intuitive exploration).


Conclusion: you are describing an intuition of a model of computing,
which could fall within declarative programming once formalised.
Haskell also falls within declarative programming, but this does not
mean it is particularly better suited than any other programming
language.


<optional-part1>
I believe I'm indirectly citing what people have already said in this
discussion.
</optional-part1>

<optional-part2>
I do not mean to criticise your point of view, I actually find it rather
interesting.
</optional-part2>

-- 
Sergiu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming
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