XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
Everything is possible by asking the right questions. XSLT was designed as a functional programming language. The functional programming paradigm dates from the 1980s and has proved very useful, even if in a limited way. Other established functional languages include Haskell and Scheme."
Posted May 7, 2004 1:17 UTC (Fri)
by freethinker (guest, #4397)
[Link]
Lisp? Wuzzat?
Posted May 7, 2004 1:46 UTC (Fri)
by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
[Link]
As for the "dates from the 1980s and has proved very useful, even if in a limited way" bit, well...heh. Lisp is much older than that, and its influence on other languages is profound. Functions as the basic unit of abstraction are prevalent in virtually every programming language there is; modern processors have explicit support for procedures with return values, and modern languages allow for passing in functions as parameters to other functions. The fact that most do not yet support returning functions as values, or creating closures, is just proof that those other languages have yet to catch up to where Lisp was 20 years ago. XML itself is just a poor rehash of symbolic expressions, anyway, only more cumbersome to use, more difficult to parse, and more unwieldy in semantics. It's irritating and amusing at once to see people try so hard to reinvent the wheel, but insist that it be triangular.
Posted May 7, 2004 1:53 UTC (Fri)
by leandro (guest, #1460)
[Link]
Posted May 7, 2004 7:45 UTC (Fri)
by stanpinte (guest, #18656)
[Link]
http://ssax.sourceforge.net/ --> they managed (IMHO) to turn xsl transformations into something readable, extensible and as powerful as a real programming language. Stan.
Posted May 7, 2004 7:51 UTC (Fri)
by dvrabel (subscriber, #9500)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted May 7, 2004 8:44 UTC (Fri)
by schauer (guest, #12010)
[Link] (1 responses)
Actually, I believe that the discussion "is X a functional programming language" is wasted time and a sign of too much time at one's hand.
Posted May 7, 2004 16:26 UTC (Fri)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
[Link]
I think that Scheme is primarily considered a functional language due to "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", which uses Scheme and teaches functional programming first. It does start by describing a purely functional subset of Scheme, giving as an initial approximation of what the computer is doing something that is only true without mutation.
The functional programming paradigm dates from the 1980s...
XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
They're pushing a weak XML derivative as a functional language? Tell me another one, please. XSLT is more properly called a dysfunctional language.XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
80s? Lisp is 30 years older than that. The article is so disinformed, it is ridiculous.
XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
if you want to see people turning XSLT into something really powerful, while leveraging functionnal programming, take a look at that:XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
Neither Scheme nor Lisp are functional programming languages.
XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
At least, for Common Lisp, being a multi-paradigm programming language, I think it's valid to say that it is *also* a functional programming language and it is conceived to be one mainly by the majority of people. For Scheme, I can't really make any claims, but AFAIK most Schemers would probably even more insist that it is a functional programming language as well. From an outside view, that perception is understandable, because for some one coming from a different paradigm, it's exactly the elements of functional programming that people have problems coping with. Which, by the way, seems to be the major point addressed by the article referred to.XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)
Lisp and its variants are not functional languages, but are suitable for writing functional programs in. They make it tractable to do functional programming (e.g., Scheme has a functional loop special form, which C, for example, does not). On the other hand, they include mutation, so they are not functional languages, and therefore cannot perform the optimizations that can be performed in functional languages. On the other hand, XSLT doesn't actually have any way of modifying things, so it, like Haskell, is actually a functional language.XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)