Re: "procedure" vs. "function"

[PMA]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 18/04/15 19:56, PMA wrote:
> > AFAIK, of our major ancestor languages, only Pascal insisted on a
> > literal working
> > function-vs-procedure distinction. Did Wirth ever defend this insistence
> > (as more
> > than a track-keeping enforcer re value-outputting vs
> > non-value-outputting code)?
>
> Actually, so did Fortran, I believe.
>
> Note my earlier comment that a function was defined as having a return
> value with no side effects. That then permits aggressive compiler
> optimisation - if a function is repeatedly called with the same
> argument, the compiler can stash the result of the first call away, and
> replace subsequent calls with a lookup table. (And given that Fortran
> was meant to be fast and maths-like, that behaviour was actually very
> sensible ... :-)
>
> But because programmers were bad at writing "proper" functions, this
> caused too many bugs and I think it just became accepted that functions
> have side effects and such optimisation was not a good idea.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
> _______________________________________________
> lilypond-user mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user

Aha.  So the improper-er their code got, the tougher time
compilers had trying to -- as Martin says -- "throw it out".

All told, is there now any real need _not_ to use the terms
"function" and "procedure" interchangeably?  That is, any
real need to try to enforce such a distinction?  The terms
are conflated, everybody knows, and there's no problem.

(No response expected -- at this point I'm just ranting.)
PMA