From: Mike Stephens Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby Subject: Re: Lambda Shambda Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:08:36 -0500 Organization: Service de news de lacave.net Lines: 43 Message-ID: <7631a84ea921373c09e25b83d0742e6e@ruby-forum.com> References: <3ab1912e670b08219714322dad0a1ebe@ruby-forum.com> <20110330143723.GA75718@guilt.hydra> <20110330192538.GA76517@guilt.hydra> <20110331053229.GB78145@guilt.hydra> NNTP-Posting-Host: bristol.highgroove.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: talisker.lacave.net 1301566145 29827 65.111.164.187 (31 Mar 2011 10:09:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@lacave.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:09:05 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <20110331053229.GB78145@guilt.hydra> X-Received-From: This message has been automatically forwarded from the ruby-talk mailing list by a gateway at comp.lang.ruby. If it is SPAM, it did not originate at comp.lang.ruby. Please report the original sender, and not us. Thanks! For more details about this gateway, please visit: http://blog.grayproductions.net/categories/the_gateway X-Mail-Count: 380683 X-Ml-Name: ruby-talk X-Rubymirror: Yes X-Ruby-Talk: <7631a84ea921373c09e25b83d0742e6e@ruby-forum.com> Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.stben.net!talisker.lacave.net!lacave.net!not-for-mail Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.ruby:2036 Chad Perrin wrote in post #990130: > I don't think it really qualifies as a language at all. It's more like > an extensible set of cupboards with (non-graphing) calculators from the > early '90s built into them. You may be interested in this http://www.programmingforums.org/thread15823.html which shows Excel solving Dijkstra's Algorithm. Excel is probably Turing complete (opinions differ) if you exclude the notion of infinite sets. If you consider a web site that collects user details, generates an insurance quote and takes payment, then my initial assessment (I've not built it yet) is Excel has the required features, including authentication, logging, cookies etc. You would need a web server to launch each Excel 'program', and you would need a module that converts formatted Excel pages into HTML. Some functions like calling web services and HTML formatting might practically have to be implemented as non-Excel code (eg VBA or Ruby) but as these would require only simple configuration they could be viewed as extensions to the inbuilt functions and would not require programming ability on the part of the user. The issue (sometimes called the Turing Tarpit) is that Excel is a programming alnguage but without many of the sophistications you see in the likes of Ruby, and therefore may be unnecessarily awkward to program in. Nevertheless I think it is instructive. If you can imagine solving practical problems in Excel then you should be able to solve the same problems in the more accepted functional languages without being tempted to slip back into imperative habits. I guess my little bit of tinkering with this leads me to ask "Why should I have to instruct the computer how to navigate data structures and code my own error capturing? Why can't I just define what I want to see, and then look at whether it turns out as I expected?" -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.