[erlang-questions] "Design patterns" for functional languages?

[Michael T. Richter]

On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 14:15 -0700, Kevin Scaldeferri wrote:

> > I'm not sure I agree with the statement quoted by Michael that FP
> > doesn't have the shortcomings of OO so GoF-like patterns aren't
> > necessary.



> Yeah, functional programming has _different_ patterns, not no  
> patterns.  And, in some sense they also highlight shortcomings.



> For example, functional languages typically do not have lists that you  
> can append to efficiently, so we need the "Accumulate and Reverse"  
> pattern.



> Erlang doesn't allow you to enumerate the messages a process can  
> receive, so we have a "Hide Message-Passing Behind Functions" pattern.


These would fall more under the heading of "idioms" than GoF-style
patterns in my books (although the latter of the two is in the same grey
space I mention below).  The equivalent in C++, to contrast to the
GoF-style patterns, would be the use of auto_ptr in functions to make up
for C++'s lack of decent memory management.  Some of the GoF patterns
(I'm looking at you here, Singleton!) verge on the idiom level, but in
general they're architectural constructs, not coding tricks.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter@REDACTED> (GoogleTalk:
ttmrichter@REDACTED)
We should sell bloat credits, the way the government sells pollution
credits. Everybody's assigned a certain amount of bloat, and if they go
over, they have to purchase bloat credits from some other group that's
been more careful. (Bent Hagemark)
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