Re: [Caml-list] OCaml's variables

[oliver <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 12:53:03PM -0400, Kristopher Micinski wrote:
> On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 7:30 PM, oliver <oliver@first.in-berlin.de> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 11:01:39AM +0200, Arnaud Spiwack wrote:
> >> Why were you astounded? This is a perfectly legitimate/correct use of the
> >> word "variable".
> > [...]
> >
> >
> > Do you think so?
> >
> > I have thought about making the sentence better, but did not found
> > a better sentence in short time.
> >
> > But name-value-binding is the term that is used in functional languages.
> > I wonder why the term "variable" pops up there.
> > And even I understood the sentence, I'm not sure if this might create confusion
> > to some readers, because the term "variable" is normally not used for functional languages.
> >
> > People new to FP will be said, there are no "variables", and then they maybe
> > will be irritated, if they find that term in a reference-manual.
> >
> > Do you see what I mean?
> >
> >
> > Ciao,
> >    Oliver
> 
> I agree with everyone else, this is a completely legitimate use of the
> word "variable."
> 
> As a native english speaker who learned OCaml at a younger age, I
> don't think the manual should be changed because a beginner might
> confuse the term "variable" with the name of the thing in C.
> 
> By the way, when you say:
> 
> > People new to FP will be said, there are no "variables", and then they maybe
> > will be irritated, if they find that term in a reference-manual.
> 
> The person saying this will be incorrect for a number of reasons:
>  1. OCaml *does* have mutable values,
>  2. The type of FP you emphasize would be more correctly (to
> disambiguate from OCaml) as purely functional programming
[...]

Yes, I somehow had a Haskell'ish thinking when looking at the ref-man.
But also the examples used there were immutable datastructures.


Maybe I need to explore that issue again in more depth (some of the examples in this thread).

Ciao,
   Oliver