[GTALUG] Google wins over Oracle in Java API copyright suit

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 02:46:01PM -0400, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
> The only functional languages I've ever used (if openscad doesn't count)
> were DSSSL (Scheme with an embedded CSS engine for document processing
> in SGML) and XSLT (Scheme [except it's in XML syntax] with an embedded
> CSS engine for document processing in XML). Both were utterly dismal and
> I only used 'em because I was paid to. Not being able to use loops but
> having to write functions that called themselves recursively seemed a
> huge amount of faffing about and possibly constituted cruelty to
> programmers.

But using a loop means you are telling the system how to do things,
rather than telling it what you want done and letting it (usually) do
a better job at the how.  After all with a loop you are controlling the
excution order of the processing.  If done right you usually shouldn't
need to care.

But yes functional languages require a different philosophy.  Functional
languages are not for people that want to micromanage the computer.

-- 
Len Sorensen