Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha)

From	"Nils M Holm" <nmh@t3x.org>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha)
Date	2014-09-20 02:19 -0400
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<14-09-016@comp.compilers> (permalink)

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Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> writes:
> > But Smalltalk, for which development started in 1969, was a very early
> > functional object-oriented language.
>
> Smalltalk is an imperative language; e.g., it contains assignment and
> its objects contain changeable state.  What makes you think that
> Smalltalk is functional?

While I would agree that Smalltalk is not intended to be a functional
language, I think the argument of assignment and mutable state is not
valid.

In "The Definition of Standard ML", Milner, et al describe ML as a
functional language "in the sense that the full power of mathematical
functions is present". IMO, this property is sufficient to classify a
language as "functional". Even SML does have mutable state (references)
and assignment, BTW.

--
Nils M Holm  < n m h @ t 3 x . o r g >  www.t3x.org
[Does that make python functional? -John]

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Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha) "Nils M Holm" <nmh@t3x.org> - 2014-09-20 02:19 -0400
  Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2014-09-21 13:40 +0000
    Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha) Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-09-21 14:28 +0000

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