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From: sean@castle.ed.ac.uk (S Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: Re: Industry-Strength Rapid Prototyping with Functional Prog?
Message-ID: <9343@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 27 Mar 91 09:32:40 GMT
References: <348@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> <9309@castle.ed.ac.uk> <417@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 42

paul@cs.uq.oz.au (Paul Bailes (P.A.)) writes:

>In <9309@castle.ed.ac.uk> sean@castle.ed.ac.uk (S Matthews) writes:

>>paul@cs.uq.oz.au (Paul Bailes (P.A.)) writes:

>>This is interesting.  Why do you think that functional programming is
>>good for this sort of thing if you cannot quote evidence from which you
>>have concluded that it is good for this sort of thing (apart from
>>faith---halleluja praise the Lord (Alonzo Church in this case I
>>suppose)). 

>AMAZING! It sounds as if you are saying that the only legitimate
>grounds for advocating some technique etc. are its prior (satisfactory)
>uses. How then may someone advocate something innovative? I'm

One might say:

`Perhaps functional programming languages are a good tool for
prototyping software, certainly my personal experience on small programs
suggests that they *might* be.  I will run some experiments to see if my
intuition is good and this is really true.'

Or one might say:

`I have seen described/worked on several projects where functional
programming languages were used more effectively than other approaches
that I have seen/used for developing prototypes of software'.

But one would not say:

`I was told by someone once that functional programming languages are
good for rapid prototyping.  Let's rearrange the syllabus of the computer
science course on this basis.'

A suspect belief system is a belief system where things are believed
without good reason to think that they are true.  It is, of course,
possible for a suspect belief system to believe things that are true,
but then the first test of a good belief system is that it does not
believe anything false, rather than what it believes that is true.

Sean