-There's no need for you to know this for our seminar. But in case you're interested...
+There's a lot more trivia and links here than anyone needs to know for this seminar. It's
+there for anyone who may be interested.
Others (and ourselves) will often talk about "functional programming
languages." But it would be more appropriate to talk of functional *paradigms*
The **dynamically typed** languages give types more of a background role in the
program. They include the Lisp family (which in turn includes all the variants
-of [[!wikipedia Scheme]], and also [[!wikipedia Common Lisp]], and [[!wikipedia
-Clojure]]). They also include [[!wikipedia Erlang]] and [[!wikipedia Joy]] and
-[[!wikipedia Pure]], and others.
+of [[!wikipedia Scheme (programming language) desc="Scheme"]], and also [[!wikipedia Common Lisp]], and [[!wikipedia
+Clojure]]). They also include [[!wikipedia Erlang (programming language) desc="Erlang"]] and [[!wikipedia Joy (programming language) desc="Joy"]] and
+[[!wikipedia Pure (programming language) desc="Pure"]], and others.
Although these languages are hospitable to functional programming, some of them
also permit you to write *imperatival* code (that is, code with *side-effects*)
Most programming languages, functional or not, use **strict/eager evaluation**. For
instance, languages of the ML family are all statically-typed functional
-languages with strict/eager evaluation. These include [[!wikipedia SML]] and
-[[!wikipedia Caml]] and [[!wikipedia Nemerle]]. Other statically-typed
-functional languages with strict/eager evaluation are [[!wikipedia Scala]] and
-[[!wikipedia Coq]]. Like Scheme, many of these languages permit *imperatival*
-as well as functional coding; but they are regarded as functional programming
-languages because they are so hospitable to functional programming, and give it
-a central place in their design.
-
-A few languages such as [[!wikipedia Miranda]] and [[!wikipedia Haskell]] are
+languages with strict/eager evaluation. These include [[!wikipedia Standard ML desc="SML"]] and
+[[!wikipedia Caml]] and [[!wikipedia Nemerle]]. SML in turn has several variants
+or implementations: [[!wikipedia MLton]], [[!wikipedia Standard ML of New Jersey desc="SML/NJ"]], [[!wikipedia Moscow ML]],
+and [[!wikipedia Mythryl]]. Microsoft's [[!wikipedia F Sharp (programming language) desc="F#"]]
+is derived from Caml.
+
+Other statically-typed functional languages with strict/eager evaluation are
+[[!wikipedia Scala (programming language) desc="Scala"]] and [[!wikipedia
+Coq]]. Like Scheme, many of these languages permit *imperatival* as well as
+functional coding; but they are regarded as functional programming languages
+because they are so hospitable to functional programming, and give it a central
+place in their design.
+
+A few languages such as [[!wikipedia Miranda (programming language) desc="Miranda"]] and [[!wikipedia Haskell (programming language) desc="Haskell"]] are
statically-typed languages that instead mostly use **lazy evaluation**. However,
it'd be more strictly accurate to say Haskell is lazy *by default*. You can
also make Haskell evaluate some expressions strictly/eagerly; you just have to
We'll talk much more about monads, lazy vs strict evaluation, and functional vs
imperatival code as we proceed.
+We won't much discuss static vs dynamic typing; this has to do with lower-level
+implementation details than we'll be concerned with. However, you'll encounter
+the difference in practice as you work with Scheme and OCaml, respectively; and
+you'll see it referred to as you read around. So it's good for you to
+have placed it in your mental map.
+