Re: [stack] Survey: Your impressions and thoughts about concatenative languages

Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> FWIW I like your definition.

In your blog you mention, reasonably, that because we're uncertain
about the precise results of the term 'concatenative', we should use
another term; you suggest 'compositional'.

I disagree. Our uncertainty about the precise meaning of the term
mirrors the fact that these languages are very little studied; the
fact that we're a bit murky on the precise boundaries of our field
therefore only makes sense.

At the same time, your suggested term, 'compositional', is good; the
obvious problem is that it's already been used. A compositional
computer language is a language used only to bring together code
written in other languages; the language Piccola
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Research/Piccola/ is a 'pure' example,
and I suppose the various shell scripts are impure examples. But
that's not broad use, and I don't see a severe problem with using it
anyhow.

I also don't agree with your claim that Haskell qualifies as a
concatenative language. Am I wrong? Do any two valid Haskell programs
concatenated together form a valid Haskell program? My knowledge here
is limited, but I don't _think_ currying is that powerful -- _some_
Haskell programs are 'concatenative' in that sense, but it's not a
general feature of the language, to the best of my knowledge.
Furthermore, if Haskell were concatenative, would that be bad? I admit
that I did invent 'concatenative' with some vague idea of being
'opposite' to applicative languages, but I don't think the category is
useless even if it's orthogonal rather than opposite.

> - Christopher

-Wm