LISPisms

In dynamically typed languages, values have types. In statically typed languages, values have types.

When you use imperative languages, you tell the computer what to do. When you use functional languages, you tell the computer what to do.

>>1
When you use declarative functional languages, you tell the computer HOW to do it. See: SQL, Haskell

When you use lisps, you tell the computer what language in which to do what you tell it.

>>2

See: SQL, Haskell

Throw Prolog in there, too. That language shits itself if you don't micromanage every decision it has to make. Declarative, my ass!

Declare my anus!

>>3
fuck you prolog is the shit

>>5
You accidentally put "the" in there.

>>6
?- is_an_idiot(Anon).
Anon = >>6

>>5
In theory only. I'll agree it's a good query language. But programming applications in it? No way, it turns back into convoluted imperative programming, with red cuts and inline assertions.

>>8
like many languages, it has its uses. predicate logic, theorem proving and some vaguely AI-related concepts (e.g. natural language processing) is what it's good for. writing applications? not really.

the more I program the more I'm starting to believe in the idea that there aren't too many 'bad' languages, most of them are just misapplied. also, there isn't such thing as a 'general purpose programming language' and many of the bad code issues are related to people pushing C++-shaped peg into a round hole.

I have to agree with the Prolog slander. It sometimes wants to be an ugly Lisp, other times a prettier SQL. I've never felt comfortable with the knowledge base shit being built right into the language. It feels dirty and perverse like that, like BASIC's graphics calls.

>>10
Prolog doesn't want to be prettier SQL, SQL wants to be uglier Prolog. Prolog came earlier.

>>11
Error: UnclaimedDubsException

Prolog isnt anything like sql

Pound your square peg into this round hole.

Pound into these dubs

Sit down dear child and hear of languages long ago...

Back I. The days of vacuum tube and electromechanical switches, when punch tape rules the world p, there were two languages: The Algorithmic Language, and the List Processor. The List Process, or LISP, to its friends was built around s-expressions. The other, also known as ALGOL, was built around a strange and unholy hybrid of text and formulae that only an insane mathematician would love, for almost every statement was a special case.

ALGOL syntax went on to rule the world.

Seriously kid. There are only two syntaxes, and procedural, structural, object oriented, aspect, imperative, and all the rest are immaterial to the syntax, for they refer to how programs are organized, not what keys you press on the keyboard. Don't they teach programming languages anymore?

Don't they teach programming languages anymore?

No, and they never really did. The only way to learn computing, both the practical and the theoretical, is by apprenticeship and self-learning. Universities have no clue what they're doing, even if some individuals within them are great.