Noel Welsh wrote:

>Let me just check - you don't consider Scheme to be a
>functional language?
>

I think the following nails it down:

==

Historically, Lisp was one of the first languages to accomodate a 
functional programming style, and for this reason, some people still 
call it a functional programming language. However, that's not correct 
in a strict sense. Several paths have been followed since then, and 
while languages like Miranda and Haskell were surely influenced by early 
Lisp dialects, they have taken a purely functional approach. Today's 
Lisp dialects, foremostly Common Lisp, don't see any problems in making 
use of side effects, using iteration instead of recursion, using 
object-oriented abstraction if useful for the problem at hand, and so 
on. Just use the best abstraction for your current problem.
==

The above quote was pinched up from comp.lang.lisp; they had there 
discussions the other day. Okay, Scheme is considerd even more 
"functional" than Lisp, but the above quote is, I think, valid for 
Scheme too.

Monads are not mentioned in the above quote, but I would like to stress 
that Clean circumvents monadic file input-output but ensures a 
functional style with no side effects! I think they were the first to 
success in this way.

>
>Just about any alternative syntax would be cleaner
>than O'Caml! ;-)
>
>Noel, Scheme hacker and O'Caml lurker
>
One thing which I would like to have solved for myself:

Will  my Scheme code be readable a year later ? Or would in such a case 
Clean or OCaml pay off?

S. Gonzi


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