From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-08-14T06:16:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Language chatter

Francis Cianfrocca wrote:
> Ok, so how about this for a hypothesis?

> So here's my hypothesis: find a radically different discpline for building
> large systems in which "components" are developed using non-FP languages
> like Java and Ruby and even C++. These components are much coarser-grained
> than the ones you normally think of from object-orientation. They are more
> like relatively large subsystems, but self-contained and fully
> unit-testable. The idea is that the upper size limit for these functional
> blocks is correlated with the point at which (speaking informally) they
> become "too hard" to debug.
> 
> Now take these components, which have side effects like writing databases,
> sending purchase orders, etc etc, and knit them together into larger 
> systems
> using a pure functional language. This captures the intuition that no
> program should ever get too "large" in terms of function points, but also
> the distinction between functional components (which are most easily 
> written
> imperatively) and large-scale process definitions (which are most easily
> written functionally).

1. Hmmm ... can/should the "top-level" part of this be done in Ruby as well?

2. "Can your programming language do this?"

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html

3. Can "MapReduce" be implemented in Ruby?

http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html


Why the heck should *Erlang* programmers have all the fun?