Don Cave said:
> We've been through the generalities of this discussion before - is "map"
> hard, are "for" loops easy? what if you never learned an imperative
> language, does that make a difference, aren't functional languages the
> most natural because everyone knows about equations, ... etc.
Oh yes.
The problem comes from the sole fact that -- generally -- we sadly start by the imperative paradigm. I now there are a few universities, in France, which teaches to the beginners Lisp or Ocaml, but they are not countless.
Moreover, call me an integrist but beginning students are usually dumb (I was, so no offense): either they are stubborn and reject programmation whatever the language is, or they are geeks who swear by "regular" languages (*), mostly because gamemakers or software companies use them. They follow the crowd. Time to change some minds.
But, hey, by swearing by functional programming I'm kind of a nonconformist geek, too.
(*) Been there.
I'm digressing.
2010/5/6 Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer@web.de>
> Haskell just matched the natural way of thinking pretty closely.
I agree. Especially with datatypes. I personnaly don't think naturally in objects, with notions of inheritance and such. IMO, it is much more human to express in terms of alternatives.
A door is either unlocked or locked with a key:
data Door = Unlocked | Locked Key
(maybe not the best example but it's just the one that went through my mind)
I chose the Dyre method. The easy path. ^^
If I was trying to make a game, I should be trying hslua. Just sad I didn't find an easy way to script in functional (*).
(*) Nonconformist geek hit again.