Joy language. Reply

[S.D.Mechveliani]

S. Alexander Jacobson <alex@shop.com> writes 


> I just found out about a functional programming language called 
> Joy (see http://www.latrobe.edu.au/philosophy/phimvt/joy.html).
>
> Joy differs from Haskell in that it has no variables.  Instead, all
> functions are postfix, taking a stack as their argument and returning a
> stack as a result.
> [..]
> tree-rewriting rules go away), faster development, easier optimization
> (search and replace lists of functions) and even simple meta-programming.
> Here is a quick example program to give a flavor for how it works.
> 
> [1 2 3 4]  [dup *]  map == [1 2 3 4] [square] map
>
> is the same as Haskell's
>
> map (\x->x*x) [1,2,3,4] == map square [1,2,3,4]
> [..]


They say FP language and internal language of Miranda 
(S, K combinators) also avoid variables.
What is the difference to Joy?
I thought it may be a good strategy for a compiler to get free of 
variables, but it is hard for a programmer to write programs 
avoiding variables. Is Joy programming a joy?

-----------------
Serge Mechveliani
mechvel@botik.ru