What is a functional programming language?

Re:What is a functional programming language? by knowtheory on Thursday January 13, 2011 @09:12PM (#2102241)

I think we would be remiss to mention that fundamentally the Lambda Calculus and Turing Machines are mathematically equivalent, as proved in the Church-Turing Thesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis ).

And while it is true that there are functional features that are unsupported in the basic syntax of imperative languages, you can still do equivalent computation, and after all "Whoever does not understand LISP is doomed to reinvent it" :P

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Re:What is a functional programming language? by cyrus_ on Thursday January 13, 2011 @09:44PM (#2102328)

54. Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.

—Alan Perlis, Epigrams on Programming

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Re:What is a functional programming language? by knowtheory on Thursday January 13, 2011 @10:00PM (#2102357)

ha, that's great.

I have to say learning about Lisp and the Lambda Calculus renewed my interest in computation and programming back in university. I really find Turing machines quite dull.

Perhaps i did not adequately disclaim my statements though. Having to hack a LISP into your imperative language is neither easy, maintainable or recommended. Just cause you can do it, doesn't mean you should ;)

The rest of the epigrams:

http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epig...

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