Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Dewie 4671 days ago
> That's an insightful comment and an important point. Because the underlying computation is physical, there's no such thing as side-effect-free computation. Any attempt to treat programming as purely mathematical, i.e. pure FP, is going to run up against this physical substrate. You can't abstract it away completely, and it gets complicated if you try. So I don't think pure FP is likely to be an ultimate solution to the core problems of minimizing complexity and building scalable abstractions. It would be, if programming were math, but math is not executable.

Oh come on. Is the fact that your processor emits slightly more heat from computing your pure functions, and once in a while a cosmic ray may shift a bit or two, really such a big hindrance? You sound like a die-hard purist, ironically. We might as well ditch the whole idea of applied mathematics since there is always going to be a mismatch between the real world and mathematics. Triangulate? You can't do that, because the degrees you measure isn't going to be measured to the 'infinitely' precise decimal point. The whole theory behind geometry is based on practically unatainable ideals; surely Plato would be turning in his grave if he knew that cartographers had been using geometry to make those (fairly inaccurate) maps. shudder
2 comments
scott_s 4671 days ago
I think that is an uncharitable interpretation of gruseom's comment. I assumed he was referring to the fact that some programming tasks are inherently stateful, such as writing OS kernels and device drivers.

However, I think that we should be able to, in principle, provide abstractions on top of inherently stateful things that hides their nature. In the same vein, we should be able to architect programs so that we can separate the inherently stateful stuff from the functionally pure stuff. For some applications, this will help. For others, not so much.

link
Dewie 4671 days ago
> I think that is an uncharitable interpretation of gruseom's comment. I assumed he was referring to the fact that some programming tasks are inherently stateful, such as writing OS kernels and device drivers.

No. The underlying computation is physical is just as true for any computer program, OS kernel or not. What was referred to was clearly the fact that it's silicon at the bottom level of any computation, just as his parent was talking about ("leaky abstraction" and all that).

link
jhaywood 4671 days ago
I agree, mathematics is still the best tool we have for actually understanding these things.
link