alt Hacker NewsNot just does the computer not do functional.
UI is also very much not functional, and in fact the lack of progress in UI the last 30-40 years can largely be traced to trying to create UI with procedural/functional programming languages, an instance of linguistic-architectural mismatch.
Further reading:
Programs = Data + Algorithms + Architecture: Consequences for Interactive Software Engineering -- Stéphane Chatty.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-92698-6_...
Can Programmers Escape the Gentle Tyranny of call/return?
https://2020.programming-conference.org/details/salon-2020-p...
UIs Are Not Pure Functions of the Model - React.js and Cocoa Side by Side
https://blog.metaobject.com/2018/12/uis-are-not-pure-functio...
Beyond Procedure Calls as Component Glue: Connectors Deserve Metaclass Status
https://2024.splashcon.org/details/splash-2024-Onward-papers...
Replies
> UI is also very much not functional,
I disagree, and I believe that the complete stagnation of GUIs is due to ignoring this.
There is no good reason why a GUI system isn't:
Description->Pack->Apply events->Generate assets->Render assets.
At each point you reify the result into an artifact that is everything the next stage needs. This has a couple of nice properties. One property is that everything is deterministic and testable. Another property is that after the pack and apply, everything is now embarrassingly parallel. Another good property is that you have an artifact that the accessibility people can latch onto before you bury it under pixels.
That would be a very functional way to deal with GUIs.
However, we continue inheriting properties and single main threading everything like we're still on 33MHz machines with 8MB of RAM.
Thanks for those links! Some of it was great reading.
What is your thesis then? What is UI?