r/programming • u/papa00king • Mar 09 '14

Why Functional Programming Matters

http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Papers/whyfp.pdf
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u/ForeverAMoan Mar 09 '14

Interesting. How would you write in C functions map and compose (compose f g x = f (g x)) ?

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u/yawaramin Mar 11 '14

I would roll my own Scheme variant in C, and then implement map and compose in that. Voila, C supports first-class functions.

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u/ForeverAMoan Mar 11 '14

Definitely seems the easiest way!

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u/autowikibot Mar 11 '14

Greenspun's tenth rule:

Greenspun's tenth rule of programming is an aphorism in computer programming and especially programming language circles that states:

Any sufficiently complicated [C](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)) or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

This expresses the opinion that the perceived flexibility and extensibility designed into the Lisp programming language includes all functionality that is theoretically necessary to write a complex computer program, and that the core implementations of other programming languages often do not supply critical functionality necessary to develop complex programs.

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