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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: Functions vs constants
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 17:14:54 -0500
Date: 2014-07-22T17:14:54-05:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <lqmnou$tem$1@loke.gir.dk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 18igilt89njaa.n3uy7bzna7nx.dlg@40tude.net

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:18igilt89njaa.n3uy7bzna7nx.dlg@40tude.net...
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2014 00:06:13 -0700 (PDT), Maciej Sobczak wrote:
...
>> That is, please don't turn Ada into
>> yet another functional language, there are enough of them already and
>> getting lost in the crowd is certainly not what Ada needs today.
>
> I don't think this is related to functional programming, which is
> essentially an attempt to abstract away any computational states.

Right.

> However, indeed the only difference between a value and a parameterless
> function is one of being given vs. computed.

Even that's muddled in Ada, since enumeration literals are parameterless 
functions with a given value. They're definitely not constants, and they're 
definitely not computed. (Expression functions muddle it a bit as well.)

That's why it would have been best to have no such distinctions at all (at 
least from a usage standpoint).

One could even imagine a radical solution of having no constants at all, as 
parameterless expression functions would serve the purpose just as well. 
(Too radical, I think, as the syntax of an expression function would be too 
verbose for the use.)

                                   Randy.




  reply	other threads:[~2014-07-22 22:14 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 47+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-07-21 21:18 Functions vs constants Victor Porton
2014-07-21 21:28 ` Victor Porton
2014-07-21 21:49   ` Shark8
2014-07-21 21:52     ` Victor Porton
2014-07-21 21:59       ` Adam Beneschan
2014-07-21 21:35 ` Niklas Holsti
2014-07-21 21:41   ` Victor Porton
2014-07-21 23:23   ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-22  7:42     ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-22 22:07       ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-23  7:55         ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-23 21:44           ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-23 12:37         ` G.B.
2014-07-23 22:12           ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-24  7:20             ` Stefan.Lucks
2014-07-25  4:43               ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-26  2:36                 ` Shark8
2014-07-24  8:27             ` Georg Bauhaus
2014-07-24 10:11               ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-24 10:49                 ` G.B.
2014-07-24 12:50                   ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-25  4:56               ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-25  6:45                 ` Georg Bauhaus
2014-07-25 10:46                   ` G.B.
2014-07-25 19:31                   ` Randy Brukardt
2014-07-25 20:02                     ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-26  2:45                       ` Shark8
2014-07-26  8:02                         ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-26 14:03                           ` Shark8
2014-07-26 14:18                             ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-21 21:55 ` Victor Porton
2014-07-22  7:06 ` Maciej Sobczak
2014-07-22  7:50   ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2014-07-22 22:14     ` Randy Brukardt [this message]
2014-07-23 13:21       ` Stephen Leake
2014-07-23 13:27         ` Victor Porton
2014-07-23 15:10         ` Adam Beneschan
2014-07-23 21:57 ` Robert A Duff
2014-07-24 12:25   ` Victor Porton
2014-07-24 15:53     ` Robert A Duff
2014-07-24 15:57       ` Victor Porton
2014-07-24 16:47   ` Pascal Obry
2014-07-24 12:26 ` anon
2014-07-24 12:52 ` Victor Porton
2014-07-24 16:01   ` Robert A Duff
2014-07-24 16:15     ` Adam Beneschan
2014-07-25  5:05     ` Randy Brukardt
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