Comment by wcarss

I was totally unfamiliar with any linking between functional programming and Abstract Data Types before reading your post. They are certainly present outside of that world.

Back in my university data structures class, an Abstract Data Type was just the collection of "a data structure and its operations". For example, a tree ADT could be a struct of two pointers and some value, along with operations like addNode, removeNode, findNode, copy, create, destroy, etc... We wrote lists, stacks, trees, hashes, and graphs in C as self-contained ADT libraries. This wikipedia page [1] explains the differences in approach.

The concept of data+operations was a lead in to objects for us, and seems very simple. Is the ADT idea in functional programming inherently more complex? I see from that page that it is intended to be immutable, which is certainly a difference.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_data_type#Imperative_v...