Re: [stack] An Overlooked Paradigm in Functional Programming

chris glur <[email protected]> wrote:

> Can someone add value to my query/idea that 'perhaps cat-like is
> effective/productive in using pre-existing functions'.


I haven't seemed to be able to add the value you're looking for, so good
luck. I hope you come up with some interesting ideas.

I'm only interested in productivety increases, which
> IMO come mostly by managing complexity ie. reducing the cognative
> load;


If productivity truly is your main goal, you might consider being a little
more open to other possible factors contributing to productivity. For
example, the things that make a large team productive are not the things
that make a single person productive. This is why Java is so successful with
huge websites, and so unpleasant for personal projects. Anyone can slap
together a website for Python; but to merely get started with Java requires
you to choose between many competing frameworks for a million little parts
of the language, all of which have a million little configuration choices --
a large team has a specialist for each area, so the team can do the best
possible thing... the one person can't possibly figure out the best thing,
and will usually just pull some boilerplate code off the web.

Aside from the question of whether there are other ways to increase
productivity, the ways in which one manages complexity also matter. Compare
the solution in Java to the solution in Ruby -- and then look at Arc's
theory. (Arc's theory is that productivity is directly related to the
shortness of the natural solution in the language.)

Figuring out what's actually going on to cause productivity is a hard, hard
question... I hope you contribute to answering it someday.

Perhaps   http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Staapl
> is talking about 'layered' system/s: like cat-like using pre-existing
> functions;
> but at this stage of life, I'm not interested in 'playing cross word
> puzzles',
> which seems the motivation of many contributors here.
>

Playing with puzzles is sometimes useful, if the puzzles have never been
solved. We all have a part to play, if we're willing to do the work to play
it.

-Wm


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