W3C discussion: Principle of Least Power
There's a possibly-interesting thread running on the W3C TAG mailing list [2] about the "Principle of Least Power" [1], in which Haskell gets a mention. The debate gets kind-of interesting around discussion of analyzability of language expressions vs expressibility, with passing reference to Turing completeness. Intuitively, I've felt that expressions in a pure functional language are easier to analyze than expressions in (say) C or Java, despite them all being fully Turing complete (so no difference in expressive power there). Can it truly be said that it's easier to analyze a functional expression than a C program? What could that actually mean? I feel the discussion is (so far) missing a trick, but I'm not sure what it is. #g -- [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Dec/0101.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Dec/0113.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Dec/0115.html (etc.) [2] http://web3.w3.org/2001/tag/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/ -- Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact
Graham Klyne
Can it truly be said that it's easier to analyze a functional expression than a C program? What could that actually mean? I feel the discussion is (so far) missing a trick, but I'm not sure what it is.
The LtU article "What good is strong normalization in programming languages?"[1] may be helpful here. Barry Jay's comment about always terminating data access plus loops or fixpoints interests me in particular. I wonder, would it be useful to have a language designed entirely that way? Could you have a terminating language with only a single top level loop? Could any two programs be composed such that the result still only has a single top level loop? Would a language structured that way be advantageous for debugging, proof assistants, or other verifications? [1] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/1120 -- Shae Matijs Erisson - http://www.ScannedInAvian.com/ - Sockmonster once said: You could switch out the unicycles for badgers, and the game would be the same.
participants (2)
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Graham Klyne -
Shae Matijs Erisson