world as value

[Fergus Henderson]

On 17-Jun-1999, Marco Kesseler <mke@oce.nl> wrote:
> 
> [Adrian Hey wrote:]
> >
> >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.

That's exactly what modern "purely functional" or "purely declarative" 
languages (e.g. Haskell, Clean, Mercury) give you.

So what's the problem?

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.