Paul Sonnentag
09/23/2019, 7:12 PMthe basic operations [of the environment] accomplish tasks that users want to doAs an example, the sum-function in a spreadsheet application does something meaningful for a person who wants to calculate a budget. In comparison, a for-loop in a general-purpose language is very generic but it isn’t useful on its own. This to me suggests that there is an inherent conflict between the needs of end-users (solving a problem in a specific domain) and the goal of general purpose programming languages (being applicable to a great variety of different domains). My personal interest is more in the camp of building new end-user environments that solve a specific problem domain. I think other projects here in the slack are more aimed at finding better general purpose languages. Do you agree with this categorization and if so in what category would you put yourself?
Justin Blank
09/23/2019, 7:17 PMPaul Sonnentag
09/23/2019, 7:42 PMJustin Blank
09/23/2019, 7:56 PMDuncan Cragg
09/23/2019, 9:16 PMGarth Goldwater
09/23/2019, 9:17 PMJustin Blank
09/23/2019, 9:22 PMfold
vs sum
probably is an adequate example. Heck, Rust has sum
because one of the core members hates fold
(and I’m team no-fold too, even though I like FP).Ivan Reese
09/23/2019, 9:29 PMGarth Goldwater
09/23/2019, 9:32 PMEdward de Jong / Beads Project
09/23/2019, 10:29 PMMichael Dubakov
09/24/2019, 8:16 AMPaul Sonnentag
09/24/2019, 8:33 AMEdward de Jong / Beads Project
09/25/2019, 5:29 AMDuncan Cragg
09/25/2019, 8:12 AMtbabb
09/25/2019, 7:13 PMsum
and generic iteration. Sum would look like this:map
, but it could become a reduce
(or, equivalently, an "imperative" loop) by making connections between the "frames" of the "filmstrip".
If you cracked open the sum
node, you'd see that "iteration" node inside (with a +
node in its body). But you don't have to do that in order to use sum
.
And if you wanted to repeat something other than addition, you could do it easily without relying on the system maintainers to code a new primitive for you.Ivan Reese
09/25/2019, 7:50 PMtbabb
09/25/2019, 7:51 PMRobin
09/26/2019, 12:20 AMGarth Goldwater
09/26/2019, 7:21 PMDavid Piepgrass
11/23/2019, 9:56 PMEdward de Jong / Beads Project
11/24/2019, 1:48 AM