Re: expressions vs. statements

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

I think functions are verbs, and when they occur as
the first element of an s-expression, they're the main
verb.

--- Seth Gordon <sethg-dated-1009207871.d6a001@ropine.com> wrote:
>    This is actually a question people on this list might
>    have interesting opinions about.  Does distinguishing 
>    between expressions and statements buy you anything in 
>    expressive power?  I have often wondered about what
>    the point of this distinction was...
> 
> Every natural human language makes some kind of grammatical
> distinction between nouns and verbs.  I think programming languages
> should take note of this distinction, and make a clear boundary
> between forms that have side-effects (verbs) and forms that do not
> (nouns).  The real reason, IMHO, that so many programmers get tripped
> up by bugs like "if (a = 0) {...}" is that they have trouble
> interpreting a form that is simultaneously a noun and a verb.
> 



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