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From: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <178@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Aug 89 10:52:15 GMT
References: <2584@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <6226@hubcap.clemson.edu> <1304@batserver.cs.uq.oz> <741@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: root@castle.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
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In article <741@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>a functional language might just be a subset of a procedural one
>(think of Standard ML, for example, or Lisp).

A functional language is a language that has functions as first class values.
An imperative or procedural language is one that supports (re-)assignment.
Languages that support both are not subsets of either style; they are hybrids.

Dave Berry, Laboratory for Foundations      db%lfcs.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
    of Computer Science, Edinburgh Uni.	    !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!db

			Concept + Acronym = Thesis