Re: Practicality of functional and logic languages?

Mirek Benes <benes@dcse.fee.vutbr.cs> writes:
>I would like to know some opinions concerning functional and logic
>programming languages (Haskell, Miranda, ML / Prolog) and their practical
>usability for programming ...


There are some people out there using APL which, while not strictly a
Functional Programming Language, it is relatively close. In particular
some non-english speaking people seem to like it (it has relatively few
english keywords).


Here at R.P.I. we have the EPL project for functional programming, and it
is designed to support scientific computation. I'm not sure about the
size of our user community.


I'd like to pose a question. Most programming languages reflect the
underlying computer architecture, and allow the user to accesss machine
supported features. This makes the language easier to implement, and more
efficient at run time. Has there been research in creating architectural
support for functional programming languages?


Most machines have the internal concept of state, which is not assumed in
functional programming languages (particularly those which enforce a
single asssignment rule). Just how well could the functional programming
paradigm be expressed at the machine level?


What about the power of the functional programming paradigm? Is there an
important class of problem which cannot be done by Functional Programming?
Could you write an Operating System using Functional Programming
techniques for example?


Bill
--
maniattb@cs.rpi.edu - in real life Bill Maniatty
--

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