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The Yin and Yang of Programming


[This is from a paper we’re submitting to the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2025)] Introduction Recursion and iteration are the Yin and Yang of programming. Convent…

Our strategy is to take a pure (dark) Yin language and add a controlled, declarative form of iteration that sheds a bit of light. The evidence is that in terms of practical applications the positive Yang is dominant – the majority of problems are best solved with iterative algorithms and linear data structures. For many decades the standard approach (Good Old Fashioned AI, or GOFAI) was heavily Yin, relying on recursive algorithms and hierarchical data structures.

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