In the classification of programming languages, an applicative programming language is designed to support the development of programs as giving the result of a function of the combined variables. Successive functional transformations are applied to data to arrive at the result. Such a language, with program control and total state kept in the background, may also be known as a functional language, in a rather loose sense of the term.
Lisp and ML are applicative programming languages. In Haskell, this programming paradigm is developed into the applicative functor, which extends the higher-order functional abstraction beyond monad.
Famous quotes containing the words programming and/or language:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)