Path: utzoo!mnetor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!kunivv1!root
From: root@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl (Privileged Account)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Call for Discussion: comp.lang.functional
Message-ID: <1110@kunivv1.sci.kun.nl>
Date: 26 Feb 90 10:55:33 GMT
References: <1921@husc6.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: eerke@cs.kun.nl (Eerke Boiten)
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Lines: 26

In article <1921@husc6.harvard.edu> carlton@husc4.harvard.edu (david carlton) writes:
>The question has come up of what we mean by functional languages.  When
>pressed for a definition of them, I come up with something like
>     i) functions are first class objects.  absolutely necessary.
>    ii) there really _shouldn't_ be any side effects... yes, lisp and
>        scheme are in some (very important) sense functional, but once you
>        start using setq/set!, they lose a certain je ne sais quoi...
>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 

Why not dedicate the newsgroup to the *functional aspects* of
programming languages? This makes it clear that talking about LISP in
the group is OK, as long as you don't RPLACA etc. I even like to mention
the functional subset of Pascal, every now and then. 
A newsgroup comp.lang.functional in which ml is not used seems quite
senseless to me, anyway. It's my impression that ml is *the* language
most people do their functional programming in.

You see, it's the paradigm I'm stressing. So I suppose in that view,
comp.functional would be better.

Eerke Boiten, Department of Informatics, K.U.Nijmegen
Toernooiveld, 6525 AD Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Tel. +31-80-612236.     eerke@cs.kun.nl