Mike Klein wrote:

> >Travis Griggs (Hi Travis!)
> > Not as tidy as Smalltalk! Smalltalk is a nice *semi-functional*
> > programming language! Objects and functions are *very* similar!
>
> I agree, but look what a nice job they did on the numerics, not to
> mention one of the best written language specs *ever*.
>
> I wish we lived in a world where comparing Smalltalk and Scheme was a
> major issue.  Unfortunately, on any spectrum that includes C++/java,
> Scheme and Smalltalk are unresolvable close together.

Yup.  That would be nice.  If the LISP/Scheme/CLOS group and the
Smalltalk group (including Self, etc) were the major contenders, at least
the major areas of disagreement would be syntax, and other lesser issues.
And I could actually respect, and learn from, the "opposition"!

But something tells me that if C, C++, Java, Ada, Pascal, Modula-2/3,
Eiffel and so on and so forth all went away, it wouldn't be long before
we'd be fighting with the functional language group (ML, Haskell, etc).
Static versus dynamic typing will be a bone of contention for years to
come, I think.

And I don't, by the way, think that LISP, Scheme or CLOS qualify as
functional languages as the term is currently used in computer science.
Support for functors and the lambda calculus do not a functional language
make.  You have to have referential transparency, which requires immutable
"value objects" and the disallowing of assignment statements.  (The state
of a value object cannot change once it has been instantiated and initialized).

--Alan