Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!db 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 Lines: 12 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