Andrew Koenig wrote:
[...]
> My original posting was a response to someone who said something to the
> effect that languages without closures, lambda expressions, etc. were
> inferior. So I gave an example of a problem I would like to be able to
> solve that at least one such langauge does not make easy to solve.
>
> The reply to that is ``You shouldn't be wanting to solve that problem;
> not being able to do so is a Good Thing.''
>
> [...]
Just to make things clear to folks, I was the one that said languages with
higher-order functions are superior. And the above was not my reply.
The example Koenig brought up tried to show that sometimes you want to use
the concept of object-identity to make solving certain kinds of problems
easier. I don't disagree.
What I disagreed with (object to!) is Koenig's implication that C++'s use
of addresses as a "built-in" concept of object identity is in anyway
superior to SML's use of references. (The imperitave versus functional
argument is interesting, but irrelevant with regard to SML (the example
language brought up) because it supports both (as does Lisp).)
-thant
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