Marshall wrote: > > After all, what are the alternatives? Purely-functional > languages remove themselves from a large class of > problems that I consider important: data management.
Maybe, but I have yet to see how second-class variables are really more adequate in dealing with it. And note that even with second-class state you can still have aliasing issues - you just need mutable arrays and pass around indices. Keys in databases are a more general form of the same problem. > I have explored the OO path to its bitter end and am > convinced it is not the way. So what is left? Uniqueness > types and logic programming, I suppose. I enjoy logic > programming but it doesn't seem quite right. But notice: > no pointers there! And it doesn't seem to suffer from the > lack. Uh, aliasing all over the place! Actually, I think that logic programming, usually based on deep unification, brings by far the worst incarnation of aliasing issues to the table. - Andreas -- Andreas Rossberg, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
