Re: [stack] What does "concatenative" actually mean?
spir <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.lang.concatenative |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <20090305125232.73bebe2a@o> |
Le Mon, 2 Mar 2009 21:19:32 +0100, spir <[email protected]> s'exprima ainsi: > Hello, > > New to the list. [...] From Joy's FAQ at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/philosophy/phimvt/joy/faq.html: << The mainstream imperative languages have a state of associations between assignable variables and their current values. The values are changed by assignments during the run of the program. These languages also have an environment of formal / actual parameter associations that are set up by calls of defined functions or procedures. Purely functional languages have no state, but at least the mainstream applicative functional languages invariably have an environment. Compositional functional languages and hence concatenative functional languages have no state and need no environment. The concatenative language Joy has neither. >> I actually found the whole FAQ page really enlightening. It's not a FAQ, indeed, rather a progressive introduction to the notion of composition in PLs. And the progression is, I guess, pedagogically good even without CS background. There may be some improvements: eg now I cannot make any difference between "concatenative" and "compositional" ;-) Some transistions are still a bit harsh, too. What about asking the author to publish this text on a wiki and/or let it as an introduction (modified or as is) on the list's home site? denis ------ la vita e estrany