Why Functional Programming Matters by John Hughes.
Abstract:
As software becomes more and more complex, it is more and more important to structure it well. Well-structured software is easy to write and to debug, and provides a collection of modules that can be reused to reduce future programming costs. In this paper we show that two features of functional languages in particular, higher-order functions and lazy evaluation, can contribute significantly to modularity. As examples, we manipulate lists and trees, program several numerical algorithms, and implement the alpha-beta heuristic (an algorithm from Artificial Intelligence used in game-playing programs). We conclude that since modularity is the key to successful programming, functional programming offers important advantages for software development.
There’s a bottom line issue you can raise with your project leader or manager. “[R]educe future programming costs.” That it is also true isn’t the relevant point. Management isn’t capable of tracking programming costs well enough to know. It is the rhetoric of cheaper, faster, better that moves money down the management colon.
The same is very likely true for semantic integration tasks.
Many people have pointed out that topic maps can make the work that goes into semantic integration efforts re-usable. Which is true and would be a money saver to boot, but none of that really matters to management. Budgets and their share of a budget for a project are management motivators.
Perhaps the better way to sell the re-usable semantics of topic maps is to say the builders of integration systems can re-use the semantics of a topic map. Customers/users, on the other hand, just get the typical semantically opaque results. Just like now.
So the future cost for semantic integration experts to extend or refresh a current semantic integration solution goes down. The have re-usable semantics that they can re-apply to the customer’s situation. Either script it or even have interns do the heavy lifting. Which helps their bottom line.
Thinking about it that way, creating disclosed semantics for popular information resources would have the same impact. Something to think about.
I first saw this in a tweet by Computer Science.