Re: Lisp/AI, Carnegie Mellon University

From: Yarden Katz (yarden_at_umd.edu)
Date: 10/31/04 

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 23:05:21 GMT

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:

> A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, "Nameless" <news.mail@chello.no> wrote:
>>> A good procedural language is better. And Lisp is one of the
>>> best.
>>
>> I don't buy that either. Firstly, Lisp is a functional, not a
>> procedural, language.
>
> Nonsense. It includes some functional facilities, but if you're into
> "functional programming," ML and Haskell are likely to be vastly more
> fitting.
>
> Lisp functions in a nicely procedural manner:
>
> (loop
> for i from 1 to n by 3
> do (something-with i))
>
> If it were purely functional, there wouldn't be the side-effects of
> SETF and such.

You are obviously right in your point, but is "procedural" the first
characterization of Lisp that comes to your mind? In my opinion both
"procedural" and "functional" as one-word characterization of Lisp are
flawed, although the latter is probably more flawed than the former. 

-- 
Yarden Katz <yarden@umd.edu>  |  Mind the gap
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