world as value

[Marco Kesseler]

>Hello,
>
>I've been wondering wether or not I dare utter this heresy in public for some
>time. Now seems an appropriate moment, so here goes..
>
>   "Who said that languages have to be purely functional anyway."
>
> [....]

Well, I think I more or less agree with you. if I try to simplify
things I normally come up with two more or less complementary views.

- if I'm interested in values, I end up with lamda calculus and
  functional languages.
- if I'm interested in actions, I end up with process algebra,
  CSP, and more or less the good old imperative world.

Well, wat would be really great is to have a proper interface between
these two paradigms, so than one can use both instead of choosing one.

And I do NOT mean calling C from a functional language, assuming
that the C call is 'safe'.

If I have to specify some user interaction, I want to use an
imperative model. BUT: inside such a model there are inevitably
some values that need to be computed. So instead of offering the
possibility of calling C or Java from a functional language I
would rather have it the other way around (which is always safe).

regards,
Marco

---------------------------------------------

Marco Kesseler
Oce-Technologies B.V.
St. Urbanusweg 43, Venlo, The Netherlands
P.O. Box 101, 5900 MA Venlo, The Netherlands
telephone +31 77 359 5158
fax       +31 77 359 5450
e-mail    mke@oce.nl