From: D.Wakeling@exeter.ac.uk

From: D.Wakeling@exeter.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 1995 17:18:23 +0100
Message-Id: <2187.199508031618@olib>
To: jmattson@hpclopt.cup.hp.com, andy@dcs.gla.ac.uk, andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk, 
    simonm@dcs.gla.ac.uk, sansom@dcs.gla.ac.uk

[snip -- Will]

   I don't work on functional programming as much as I used to, but
I do have a proposal for a new surrealist programming language, which 
I hope will make Haskell obsolete (other than as an assembly language).
Briefly, functional languages are good because they are *declarative*, 
and you don't have to write lots of sequencing statements, assignemnts
etc. But surrealist languages are better because they are *suggestive*, 
and you don't even have to write any functions! It takes a while to 
get used to this much higher level of programming. For example, a 
shell sort is just a drawing of an eggshell on top of an overturned 
rowing boat. The type system is pretty hard to master too --- can I
connect a head directly to a foot? It depends on the context --- so never
complain about Type Classes, which are trivial by comparison. I'm 
currently building a prototype Surrealist Recursive Calculator (SRC) 
here at Exeter which accepts surrealist programs in HTML. 

   There, I hope that was crazy enough ... :-)

   David Wakeling (inventor of surrealist programming)

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Dr David Wakeling              | "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to 
Department of Computer Science |  win glorious triumphs, even though checkered
University of Exeter           |  by failure, than to take rank with those poor
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