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.
next prev parent 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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