Tacit programming is a programming paradigm in which a function definition does not include information regarding its arguments, using combinators and function composition (but not λ-abstraction) instead of variables. The simplicity behind this idea allows its use on several programming languages, such as APL and J and especially in stack or concatenative languages, such as PostScript, Forth, Joy, and Factor. Outside of the APL and J communities, tacit programming is referred to as point-free style, or more pithily as pointless programming, because of the lack of explicit arguments, or points.
The key idea in tacit programming is to assist in operating at the appropriate level of abstraction. That is, to translate the natural transformation given by currying:
into computer functions, where the left represents the uncurried form of a function and the right the curried. hom(X, Y) denotes the homomorphisms from X to Y while, A × B denotes the Cartesian product of A and B.
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Famous quotes containing the words tacit and/or programming:
“In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)