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From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Erlang (Was Re: Answering an Ada/COBOL Question)
Date: 1999/11/22
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Date: 1999-11-22T00:00:00+00:00
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On 22 Nov 1999, Samuel Tardieu wrote:
> >>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> 
> Robert> The only interesting thing about Prolog is the pattern
> Robert> matching and backtracking!
> 
> pattern matching has been kept in Erlang.
> 
>   Sam
> -- 
> Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org

Yes, interestingly, for the functional programming language community,
pattern matching was seen as the important feature in the design of 
Erlang. Erlang is dynamically typed, and originally,as Samuel noted, did 
not have higher order functions, which are kind of a litmus test for 
being a "functional" programming language in common meaning (*). A new 
version added HOFs and list comprehensions, but the dynamic type system is 
still offensive to some in the academic programming language community,
who favor implicit static typing.

-- Brian

(*) One may correctly argue that the expression is as silly as "object
    oriented programming language". You can program in a functional style
    in Ada too, but I wouldn't list Ada as an FP. It could enable that 
    style a bit better with a few small extensions.