From: Kevin Brown <blargity@...>
Date: 2005-09-30T01:03:19+09:00
Subject: Re: In your opinion....

On Thursday 29 September 2005 09:55, Daniel Lewis wrote:
> On 29/09/05, Mike Pence <mike.pence@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "For complex mathematical modelling, there are functional programming
> > languages that are a better fit."
>
> OK I agree with what you say about this. But according to this site:
> http://www.jvoegele.com/software/langcomp.html
> Ruby has the ability to be used as a functional language (as well as
> Smalltalk, Python, Perl and Eiffel).

Yes, you can.  The opinion expressed above was simply that those other 
languages are a better fit.

> In my final year of university (which starts in September 2006), I
> will be learning Hugs (a Haskell varient) for Functional
> Programming... it will be interesting how it compares to Ruby, and I
> would like to learn how to use Ruby as a functional language.

Um....it's not hard...?  Just don't define classes and do function calls.  
It's like trying to "learn" how to use C++ as a functional language.  
Eventually, everything collapses to a functional level because it has to to 
get executed by the processor.  One instruction at a time.  So you just don't 
use the extra OO framework built into ruby, instead pretending that def gives 
you a function instead of a method.

> I'll be using Ruby for my dissertation, I'll be developing some type
> of program that uses Fuzzy Logic... possibly something to do with
> Robotics, Agents or Control... not sure yet.

Cool. :-)

> Please continue to discuss,
>
> Thanks,
>
> Daniel.