Constant definition

[ogerardin]

I think it's not correct to define a constant as a variable that can only be assigned once; that's the mechanism that most programming languages use to implement constants, but it's not a definition.
I would just define it as a symbolic name for a value.

[jethrolarson]

Constant is also the name of a type that is a monad. I don't know if that
should be mentioned on the doc though

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 2:06 AM Olivier Gérardin [email protected]
wrote:

I think it's not correct to define a constant as a variable that can only
be assigned once; that's the mechanism that most programming languages use
to implement constants, but it's not a definition.
I would just define it as a symbolic name for a value.

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[jethrolarson]

I guess the current definition is more of const than the concept. If we define it as a symbolic name for a value then what distinguishes it from a variable?

[ogerardin]

The only difference is that a variable's value can change over time. But we know that in pure functional world there is no such thing as a variable anyway :)

[jethrolarson]

In a pure functional world variables are like math variables. If you say x
= 1 then later say it's 2 you're just being a ridiculous lier

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 12:25 AM Olivier Gérardin [email protected]
wrote:

The only difference is that a variable's value can change over time. But
we know that in pure functional world there is no such thing as a variable
anyway :)

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[stereobooster]

That is, they can be replaced with the values that they represent without affecting the result.

true, but this will work if only n is known value:

const fact = n => n < 2 ? 1 : n * fact(n-1)