Functional programming - Re: NetBSD's i386 support, was Re: [cctalk] Old UNIX Systems

On Jun 7, 2013, at 8:59 PM, ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: Recursion is a tool, just like iteration. In cases where it's useful the code is clearer/cleaner than if it was written with say iteration. Stack overflow is a bug just like any other and your point is? Given the number of compilers I've written, I wouldn't write a parser that wasn't recursive decent. It's easy to write that way and easy to read the parser code (can't say that about a table driven parser). Tree walks are another case where recursion is the way to go. Iteration results in ugly looking code. Also, different languages lend themselves to different ways of thinking about a problem. Some problems are easier to express in some languages than others. I think functional programming languages are along those lines. There are a class of problems that can be solved easily (ok, easier) in a functional language than in say a procedural language. I think part of the problem with why folks perceive this topic difficult is that they only have experience with a single class of languages. Unless you've had to work in multiple *classes* of languages and really understand the problems that a particular language class is trying to solve, folks will try to use techniques from a previous language in the new language. It's always easy to tell when that's done. I remember when I was taking an APL course, there were a number of problems that needed to be solved and were told at the beginning that we'd fail if we *ever* used iteration. You really had to think about the problem differently. TTFN - Guy