Exploring ReasonML and functional programming

Post by chillee » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #35

nafizh wrote: post #3

Why should someone unfamiliar with functional style programming be learning ReasonML rather than say, something like, haskell? Looking for concrete, technical answers.

Because Reason fully supports imperative and OOP style. You don't need to use functional style if you don't want to (of course, aside from using other people's code). Here's some classic OOP: class animal = {pub speak = "Animal noise";}; class cat = {inherit class animal; pub speak = "Meow!";}; class dog = {inherit class animal; pub speak = "Bark!";}; let speakTwice(animal: animal) = animal#speak ++ ", " ++ animal#sp…

Post by spacesword » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 6:41 AM UTC

bobbby wrote: post #31

weavie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ReasonML has a much more advanced module system via Functors. As far as I know Elm has nothing like this. Despite a fair few arguments over incorporating type classes into Elm, the creator is pretty dead set against the idea. This does make Elm a lot more approachable, but after a while can feel quite restrictive. There is bucklescript-tea, which is the Elm architecture in for Bucklescript (and thus also Reason). It…

> Elm community is more mature which means there is more documentation and libraries available There's some excellent libraries but the Elm documentation is terrible compared to Reason.

Post by tome » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 7:50 AM UTC

chillee wrote: post #21

nafizh wrote: post #3

Why should someone unfamiliar with functional style programming be learning ReasonML rather than say, something like, haskell? Looking for concrete, technical answers.

I view this as more of a general, why should somebody learn Ocaml instead of Haskell? There's a couple of reasons. #1. Ocaml's type system is nearly as expressive as Haskell's and includes several features that Haskell's does not. Polymorphic variants and functors being notable ones. #2. Laziness is very hard to get right in practice. I'm sure Haskell enthusiasts will not be very happy with that statement, but I thin…

Post by gladimdim » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

Karupan wrote: post #44

lewisinc wrote: post #10

Someone will have to explain why I might pick ReasonML over Elm for front-end development. Elm's community seems very focused on making front-end development as intuitive and hassle-free as possible. ReasonML seems like Facebook just wanted to leverage a pre-existing community but couldn't bring themselves to adopt the syntax so rewrote it in-house.

Having recently started learning Elm, I am considering switching over to ReasonML. Elm's architecture is really great for front end development and the error messages are awesome, but the ecosystem is in its infancy, and development is driven by just one guy. I've seen a lot of open PRs and issues on Github with genuinely great features, but haven't been merged in yet. ReasonML's documentation also seems better (espe…

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 9:48 AM UTC

chillee wrote: post #41

yawaramin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Reason fully supports imperative and OOP style. You don't need to use functional style if you don't want to (of course, aside from using other people's code). Here's some classic OOP: class animal = {pub speak = "Animal noise";}; class cat = {inherit class animal; pub speak = "Meow!";}; class dog = {inherit class animal; pub speak = "Bark!";}; let speakTwice(animal: animal) = animal#speak ++ ", " ++ animal#sp…

I guess it would be remiss to not mention that most Ocaml users shy away from the object oriented side of the language. Not because it's not well done (it is), but because modules work a lot better for many of the uses cases you'd want classes for.