Grafting Functional Support on Top of an Imperative Language

[Christopher Wright]

Jarrod wrote:
> I guess what I'm trying to say is functional languages are good at what 
> they do because they are functional languages. D is not a functional 
> language, and as such trying to use it as one is probably just going to 
> end up painful. If you want D to work like a functional language, turn it 
> into a functional language Walter. Force all data to be immutable by 
> default, all functions to be pure unless they prove otherwise, add native 
> support for lists and tuples and add a bunch of list manipulation 
> functions..
> Heck, why not make a functional dialect of D? Call it "D flat" and have 
> it compile alongside D or something. No need to mix the two.
> 
> The current imperative/OO style of D is brilliant, fun to use, flexible 
> and just packed with lovely features. Please don't go killing it on me by 
> trying to make it an ugly jack of all trades.

Agreed. People are mixing languages a decent amount these days; I'd like 
to see an official, supported way to integrate, say, Erlang with D, so 
that I can have Erlang parallelize stuff and D do the actual work.