🚀 go-pugleaf

Shail Aditya Gupta writes:
> ML's interactive script can be viewed ...  with each statement being
> defined in the lexical scope of all the previous ones. If you view
> it this way ... it is logical and reasonable that the second
> definition of "a" shadows the first, but the first had been "closed
> over" in the lexical closure environment of the function "b", which
> can never be destroyed, only further shadowed...

Chris Dollin writes:
> The ML definition is fine for batch use, but for incremental
> development it's a pigs trotter.

> [*Why* is ML like this? Because it's a functional language, ie, it
> has no assignment, so values don't change. Apart, of course, from
> arrays, and references. Pah.]

triple pah!

(1) dynamic shadowing is just another name for changing values

(2) you shouldn't be able to re-assign values in a constant array (can
    you??)

(3) if you want to change a value referred to from a function, you
    probably ought to use a reference of some sort :-)

Raul Rockwell

Disclaimer: I'm a J person, not an ML person.  I speak with a mild
    ignorance of the mechanics of ML.