Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!geac!jtsv16!blister!itcyyz!yrloc!rbe
From: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: Re: Industry-Strength Rapid Prototyping with Functional Prog?
Message-ID: <1991Mar25.203233.530@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
Date: 25 Mar 91 20:32:33 GMT
References: <348@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> <368@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Reply-To: rbe@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Robert Bernecky)
Organization: Snake Island Research Inc, Toronto
Lines: 29

In article <368@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> paul@cs.uq.oz.au writes:
>In <348@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> paul@cs.uq.oz.au (Paul Bailes (myself)!) writes:
>
>>HELP! I am trying to raise the profile of FP in our undergraduate degree in
>>computing. Having failed to persuade my colleagues that we should move beyond

Well, at the risk of having tactical nukes directed this way from the Real FP
types...

I realize that university types involved in language design etc don't have much truck with mundane issues such as Real Life Applications. However, if you look
at the ACM SIGAPL proceedings, you'll see a number of articles on such
topics as:

a. Functional Programming in APL. AI, Games, etc. here.

b. APL for Prototyping(APL86 in particular). Hitachi used APL for prototyping
   a new PL/I compiler, and claims that it shortened development time by 1/3!
   (If you have ever written a PL/I compiler or even used PL/I, you'll
    realize how huge a savings this is).

c. J: A new dialect of APL, which uses the ASCII character set, and which we
   hope has discarded a number of design errors we made in APL. J is MUCH
   more functional than APL ( You can merge two arrays to make a third --
   no need for indexed assignment). Recent work by Roger Hui and yrs trly
   involve Function Arrays, called Gerunds, which make functions first class
   objects in the language. See earlier work by me in APL84 (SIGAPL Quote Quad
    vol 14, no 4).

Bob