Re: OOP vs imperative, was Hello v1.0.3 distributed programming language available (alpha)

Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> writes:
> > But Smalltalk, for which development started in 1969, was a very early
> > functional object-oriented language.
>
> Smalltalk is an imperative language; e.g., it contains assignment and
> its objects contain changeable state. What makes you think that
> Smalltalk is functional?


While I would agree that Smalltalk is not intended to be a functional
language, I think the argument of assignment and mutable state is not
valid.


In "The Definition of Standard ML", Milner, et al describe ML as a
functional language "in the sense that the full power of mathematical
functions is present". IMO, this property is sufficient to classify a
language as "functional". Even SML does have mutable state (references)
and assignment, BTW.


--
Nils M Holm < n m h @ t 3 x . o r g > www.t3x.org
[Does that make python functional? -John]

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