[clean-list] Clean's answer to the Functional Achilles-heel

[RT Happe]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2001, Mark Phillips wrote:
> The last year or so I have been trying to teach myself a little
> about about various different programming paradigms.  I am hoping
> to form a "big picture" perspective of the advantages and
> disadvantages of different forms of programming.  Hopefully this

Aside:  you may find Friedman's et alium Essentials_of_Programming_
_Languages (cf. http://www.schnada.de/hylin/tao.html#wiz ) useful.

> F/L paradigm does not sit well with I/O (nor does it model interaction of
> objects with time-dependent states that well).  Perhaps I am wrong, but

I think it's quite instructive to look after the way texts on a purely
declarative language describe (informally) the meaning of expressions
involving state (expressions that describe resp. perform state
transitions).  Typically, I'd say, the wording is imperative, and the
programming language offers syntactic means to fake imperative semantics
(or to suggest an imperative interpretation).  The pure FPer is a
latter-day gnostic who happily indulges in sinning with the syntactic
flesh as long as he keeps the semantic soul clean.

rthappe