Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Call for Discussion: comp.lang.functional
Message-ID: <1830@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Feb 90 17:47:56 GMT
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 17

In <1921@husc6.harvard.edu>, carlton@husc7.HARVARD.EDU (david carlton) writes:

 >  i) functions are first class objects.  absolutely necessary.
 > ii) there really _shouldn't_ be any side effects... yes, lisp and

 > I would be willing to define functional languages for the purpose of
 > the group as languages which satisfy i) and ii); so languages in which
 > functions are first class objects, and in which there are no side
 > effects.  This would exclude lisp and scheme (which have their own
 > newsgroups anyways) and ml (sorry...) but would at least allow the
 > functional core of the above, as well as all of your other favorite
 > languages (hope, miranda, haskell, etc.)

I think the group should be for functional programming and not just
for functional programming in pure functional languages.  It should
not exclude the functional aspects of languages such as Lisp, Scheme,
and ML.