Programming Language History

[Paul Lussier]

Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:

> LISP fans tend to approach everything recursively, because
> recursion is fundamental to LISP.

Well, I wouldn't go that far.  Recursion only works for problems which
can be solved recursively.  And there are plenty of problems which
*can* be solved recursively, but are best not to due to performance
problems (unless you start using tricks like caching and memoization)

LISP is certainly more conducive to recursive solutions for certain
things, but I would re-phrase your statement to something like:

  LISP fans tend to approach everything functionally because
  functional programming is fundamental to LISP.

I attempted to explaing what I meant by that statement several
different ways, but the more I typed the more it became evident that I
didn't fully grok the term :)

However, when in doubt, google :)  Wikipedia has a nice explanation:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

-- 

Seeya,
Paul