[Haskell-cafe] Engineering Value of Functional Programming

[Jerzy Karczmarczuk]

Joachim Durchholz:

>
>> And who worked out those "best libraries"?
>
> *Specialists.
> Not application programmers. *

Jo, did you ever teach  CompSci in a comprehensive context, so that it 
was (could be) useful to read some History?
Well, I've been formed as physicist, so some examples. Almost whole 
CERNLIB has been created, implemented and analysed before Eru Ilúvatar 
created the race of Specialists. The accelerator users NEEDED 
intelligent code for their applications, and there were no Wizards in 
the neighbourhood.

*Quicksort* has been invented by Tony Hoare between 1959 and 1961 
(publication).  When he studied in Moscow, he was offered a work on a 
translation project, and needed a good method to process dictionaries.  
It was thus an */application/* project, and in such a way TH *became* 
specialist!

Interesting story... The Mercury Autocode was less then useful to 
reasonably implement sorting and TH, who in 1961 studied Algol 60 (in 
Brighton) found recursion. Partly thanks to him, the recursive 
algorithms began to proliferate, also in numerical realm; you might know 
that at the beginning Algol had no recursion, since some specialists 
within its Committee were against, saying that this was useless, only 
slowed down the programs. Well, the anti-recursionists continue until 
today...

The first interesting "computer experiment", the dawn of simulation, 
with some new algorithms, is the FPUT work (Fermi, Pasta, Ulam, Tsingou, 
1953). Will you call them "specialists" (surely of something) and not 
"applicative programmers"? Actually, the team had one true programmer, 
Mary Tsingou. All of you probably know who was Fermi or Ulam...

Monte Carlo: Nicholas Metropolis was a physicist. What "best libraries" 
invented by "specialists" could he look for, while participating in the 
Manhattan project?

The algebraic language Schoonschip with its wonderful rewriting system, 
is the creation of Martinus Veltman. Do I have to remind you what was 
his principal specialty? (and the successor of Schoonschip, Form was 
created by a physicist, Jon Vermaseren; Reduce: by Hearn, physicist as 
well).

Do you think that Stephen Wolfram began his carreer  as a specialist in 
computer science? Verify.

OK, I stop here.

> > No cooking of specific (problem-oriented) data structures?
>
> Domain objects, yes. But these are very straightforward; they may even 
> be associated with computations, but that's just processing, there's 
> usually no loops except for summation. Computing a histogram would be 
> the limit of what you'd do there, usually.
> Essentially, you map everything to primitives, records, lists, and 
> maps, *and that's all you need*. 
As you wish, but don't forget love... You know, it can also be mapped to 
primitives. Will then it make you happy?

I am sorry, I don't want to be impolite, but I am afraid that you don't 
master this subject. Such objects as Graphs in hundreds of different 
favours find themselves beyond your "limits of utility"??  Do you know 
what data structures are needed in, say, robotics,  in inverse kinematics?

> Nobody codes a new ray-tracing engine anymore, unless for an ICFP 
> contest. 
Do you really think that graphic/imagery/synthesis algorithms for the 
Film Industry people are primitive, assembly-style instructions, without 
loops etc., and everything stagnates? Ray tracing?? Do you know what 
organization of concurrency is needed in the implementation of real-time 
recursive radiosity? (and this is not so recent!)

Well, I wish you the best. But, please, learn something off your present 
limits, you might find many interesting topics.

Jerzy Karczmarczuk




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