Re: Mathematica daily WTF
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg115180] Re: Mathematica daily WTF
- From: DrMajorBob <btreat1 at austin.rr.com>
- Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 04:21:02 -0500 (EST)
Procedural code can be written particularly badly... and so can functional code. For elegance, efficiency, and readability, both depend on a good programmer's consistent style. Functional code, in addition, needs good names for its functions. Bobby On Mon, 03 Jan 2011 02:55:55 -0600, Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net> wrote: > On 1/2/11 at 4:54 AM, dave at removedbailey.co.uk (David Bailey) wrote: > > >> Procedural code lets anyone, 'hack' any process they desire, whereas >> functional code becomes conceptually harder and harder as >> complications set it - at least to those of us who spent many years >> writing code in C and Fortran! > >> As regards aesthetics, I'd say that sometimes functional code looks >> much more elegant than the procedural equivalent, but other times, >> it just looks obscure! > > I think the obscurity of functional code is largely a matter of > what you get used to. When I first started with Mathematica, I > only used procedural code since this is what I had been used to > with C or C++. But it has been years since I've done anything in > C or C++. I now use Mathematica on a daily basis and it has been > so long since I've used procedural code I have to refer to the > documentation to check syntax. I am now at the point where I > find it much easier to understand functional Mathematica code > than procedural Mathematica code. > > -- DrMajorBob at yahoo.com