Re:Why study functional programming? (2012)
by taeric on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @04:19PM
(#32323772)
Fair, and I don't necessarily disagree. I think this leads rather close to object oriented software being easier to reason about concretely than functional programming, though. And since most people are trying to get a concrete job done, that feels like a significant claim.
For turtle geometry, it is also important to acknowledge the metaphor and shortcomings of a more traditionally analytic framing of drawings. Specifically, X and Y coordinates for a drawing are surprisingly hard to work with. For example, I challenge you to describe the fractal snow flake in an easier way than using directions as a metaphor. Same for the dragon curve. This can be seen akin to picking a different coordinate system, I presume?
The challenge was to describe it to a 5 year old. 5 year olds are better with concrete thinking than abstract reasoning. This is what made using the turtle in Logo a genius move, as it allowed younger children to write programs by conceptualizing a physical turtle that can move, rather than thinking in terms of an abstract function that mutates data.