Why is smalltalk not a functional programming language?

Question

With the renewed interest in functional programming languages, I\'ve seen some similitudes between Smalltalk and FPL, namely closures ( BlockClosures in Smalltalk ) Yet, Sm

Answer 1

I've seen some similitudes between Smalltalk and FPL, namely closures

There's a more basic similarity - every Smalltalk message always returns a value.

But now look at the Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

[Smalltalk] sends the name of the desired operation, along with any arguments, as a message to the number, with the understanding that the receiver knows best how to carry out the desired operation.

Does that describe what you think of as Functional Programming?

@Frank Shearar - That describes Erlang too. Is Erlang now non-functional?

Erlang is something of a chimera - sequential programming is based on functions, but concurrent programming is based on message passing between processes. So Erlang is not multi paradigm or hybrid in the way that other languages allow different styles to be used to achieve the same purpose - it uses different styles for different purposes.