Why be functional when you can be efficient

Spoken like a true Electrical Engineering Major ;-)

Functional programming has a lot of great and useful concepts in it, and luckily we use a language that doesn't *force* us to be purists about it.

I agree with you on both points. However, as tilly points out, recursion (and other functional programming goodies) don't have to be inefficient. I would encourage you to check out Standard ML, and in particular its compilation model (which I can't find any good links to at the moment, but I will post them when I find them). ML is a fast functional language, and according to the (inherently flawed) computer language shootout one of the fastest (faster than C++ in some cases). In addition there are some really fast LISP implementations out there too as well.

Basically with a good compiler, you can be functional and efficient.

-stvn

In reply to Re^8: Specializing Functions with Currying by stvn
in thread Specializing Functions with Currying by FoxtrotUniform

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