Re: the necessity of Lisp's Objects?

På Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:21:54 +0100, skrev Robert Maas, see  
http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
<rem642b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:

>> From: Xah Lee <x...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> Jon Harrop wrote ... Jon, you are just picking bones.
>
> I side with Jon on this. Not sup****ting recursion is a *killer* in
> any modern programming language. It's just not acceptable to
> silently not have it working, then upon discovery simply disallow
> it!! It wouldn't even have been acceptable if it had been openly
> and honestly disallowed from the start, although at least that
> would have been less despicable.
>

I think you misunderstand here. Mathematica does have recursion.
The problem comes when you try to compile the code.
But compiling code in Mathematica is unusual.
It involves entering a Compile[code..] into the code.
Mathematica doesn't have functions in the traditional sense.
It matches the left side of the the expression for the closest match using
 
unification and pattern matching.
This feature is essential for parsing algebras etc. But as it isn't a  
simple function it confuses compile.
Compile is primarily meant to speed up numerical calculations.


--------------
John Thingstad