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0 pointsdschiptsov11y ago0 comments

let* is nothing but nested lets, which, in turn, are nested lamdas.

  (let* ((a 1) (b a))
     (+ a b))

is an abbreviation for

  (let ((a 1))
     (let ((b a))
        (+ a b))))

which, in turn, is a syntactic sugar for

  ((lambda (a)
     ((lambda (b)
         (+ a b)) a)) 1)

There is no "assignment", only lexicaly scooped bindings, which are "stateless" and "declarative".

Looping constructs in Racket are just syntactic sugar - layered macros, based on what they call "contracts", I suppose.

In CL looping constructs are micro-DSLs.

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1 comments · 1 top-level

taeric11y ago

Yeah, I chose a somewhat poor example. My main point was that order matters, you have to do A before B. You can not do them at the same time, or something different happens. (Contrasted with a language like VHDL where everything typically happens at the same time.)

Simply put, functional is not necessarily the opposite of imperative.

I took to googling to see if someone had made my point better already. The best I found quickly is this[1]. It is a good read. As it points out that we are most likely both stuck on different numbers in the "opposite of imperative" definition world.

I will say that throwing out mutability with the bathwater is perhaps the single most frustrating thing with most functional advocacy.

[1] https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/what-if-any...

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