Uday Reddy has followed up with another substantial and interesting post on referential transparency here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/210835/what-is-referential-transparency/1... The thrust of his argument appears to be that functional programmers have created a lot of confusion around the ideas of referential transparency. I sympathize but I think he is going too far. As I see it, while the very close association of functional programming and related concepts with referential transparency may have led to some confusion around the concept that doesn't mean that the specific means that functional programmers have been using to increase (classically understood) RT in functional programs is somehow invalid. Reddy has responded to my comment here http://stackoverflow.com/a/11680011/306550 and I have followed up in turn. Chris