logoalt Hacker News

teddyh • last Monday at 10:18 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

It’s been said that structured programming is programming without GOTO, and functional programming is programming without assignment statements. Is declarative programming then programming without the concept of linear time?

Replies

itishappy • last Monday at 11:51 PM

I would argue that imperative programming is the only one with a concept of linear time.

Here's a functional example:

    map (*3) [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Are those multiplications run in sequence or parallel?

Here's a fancier functional one:

    getUser = User <$> getName <*> getEmail <*> getStartDate
What order are the fields fetched?

If you answered "unspecified" then you're right! A compiler could parallelize either of these expressions!

➕ show 1 reply
Akronymus • last Monday at 5:52 PM

I thought fp was more avoiding mutability/reassigning values to identifiers

What you wrote makes me think more of the point free style

➕ show 1 reply