From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5417 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Carsten_F=FChrmann?= Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: additions Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:12:33 +0100 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Carsten_F=FChrmann?= NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1261773273 14703 80.91.229.12 (25 Dec 2009 20:34:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:34:33 +0000 (UTC) To: Mike Stay Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Fri Dec 25 21:34:26 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NOGri-00039i-A1 for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:34:26 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NOGT2-0002kc-5E for categories-list@mta.ca; Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:08:56 -0400 In-Reply-To: Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5417 Archived-At: Dear Mike, > Thanks, everyone for your replies! Many of you suggested the same > approach as Steve, functional programming and monads. At Google, > however, we use Java, C++ and Python (collectively "JCP") for programs > that run on our servers and JavaScript for programs that run in our > webpages. So there's not a lot of call for learning a functional > programming language either. It might be worth noting that JavaScript is a functional language. (It has a lambda operator ("function"), closures, and can pass functions as parameters and return values.) However, because it has eager evaluation, the whole monad business does not apply, at least not in the way it applies to Haskell. In fact, JavaScript is probably the most widely used functional language on the planet. But there are two strange phenomena: - Functional-programming experts keep on overlooking JavaScript (probably because it is so ugly from a theorists point of view) - Most professional JavaScript programmers fail to see the enormous functional potential of JavaScript. It is a very strange situation: the whole world uses a functional language and almost nobody is aware of it. Anyway, even though I am very category-prone, I must admit that category theory might be a very tough sell for the JavaScript crowd :) Best, Carsten [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]