From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Alejandro R. Mosteo" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: "functional" programming in Ada Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 16:25:48 +0100 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <9ca5267e-3c6c-4f56-bb35-26240ad3aff4@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 15:25:48 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="e9fdd27e595df73021fee87838b0b638"; logging-data="19279"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX190wlqmnuwDjDL2clMWgn5f" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 In-Reply-To: <9ca5267e-3c6c-4f56-bb35-26240ad3aff4@googlegroups.com> Content-Language: en-US Cancel-Lock: sha1:R2DSvMdEcUEz6rNlgsQ1FcPkjfI= Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:50847 Date: 2018-03-06T16:25:48+01:00 List-Id: On 06/03/18 16:01, Dan'l Miller wrote: > Alejandro R. Mosteo wrote: >> Pros: purely recursive functions are really fun to write. If/case >> expressions, used sparingly, do help a lot in having constant >> declarations in local scopes. I'm writing more code in declarative parts. > > Be careful or else you will be yearning to write in Ada the full-fledged meta-template programming abomination that C++ has become in the past decade and a half. If the Ada community were to ever want to have functional programming within Ada (as opposed to, say, bolting Ada & Haskell or Ada & OCaml together better), especially compile-time functional programming in Ada, then it should be overtly well-designed to walk in the front door, not sneak in the backdoor as it did in C++ when they/Alexandrescu ‘discovered’ that C++'s templates/generics were (just barely) Turing complete with syntax-as-nearly-unreadable-subtext that is perhaps even more cryptic than infinite-length tapes in a Turing machine. > There's a reason I quoted the functional in the subject ;-) I share the feeling nonetheless, I'm no fan (to put it mildly) of C++ template metaprogramming,