I was writing about Perl programming techniques that I learned from a Lisp programmer. Since they were techniques that used anonymous functions a lot, I thought that "functional programming" was a good description.

At the time I lacked the programming background to know that "functional programming" was already used to refer to a specific style of side-effect free programming. People who use that style also use a lot of the same techniques that I was using. But they consider those techniques to be basic building blocks, and not at all the point of what they are trying to do.

To this date I don't know of a good name for the techniques that I was explaining. You could call it, "How to use closures." MJD came out with a book about such techniques called Higher Order Perl. That name fits fairly well since using higher order functions (ie functions that apply to functions) is the key characteristic. But I don't know how people would react to your using that name. (I use higher order Perl and you don't - you suck!)

In any case I'm not particularly bothered by the lack of an accepted name. The techniques work, and I use them where appropriate. I think that it is good that more people in the Perl world use them than used to. But if someone proposes a good name that is unused, I'll gladly use it.

In reply to Re: If not 'Functional Programming', then what? by tilly
in thread If not 'Functional Programming', then what? by t'mo

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