Pissed off about functional programming (2005)

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Aug 07, 2014, 12:27 AM UTC

jackfoxy wrote: post #41

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone ever seriously believed this? I guess it's just easier to coordinate resource sharing when resource sharing isn't allowed. My favorite is "Functional programming is becoming more relevant because...multi-core" so your 100x slower functional code would get a 4x speed up and only be 25x slower?

Here's another myth, functional code is 100x slower (than what?). Here's the counter example, Microsoft Research chose the functional first language F# to build arguably the most advanced and useful quantum computer simulator in existence. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/liquid/ There's no incentive to rewrite it in C++. It already solves real quantum computing problems like molecule simulation https://c…

Post by weeksie » Thu, Aug 07, 2014, 3:05 AM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #49

weeksie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell was _absolutely_ the poster child of FP in 2005.

I disagree; I think, at the time, functional programmers were primarily using OCaml and various lisps. This is purely anecdotal, mind you, and haskell was definitely on the FP radar big time.

Post by lmm » Sat, Aug 09, 2014, 10:04 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #60

lmm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint; I prefer the Haskell style where some things are mutating and some things are not and you can see which and control when they happen. But I've seen the Clojure style used effectively, building real-world webapps, and I'd take either over the imperative-language style where your tools give you no help and it's up to you to keep track of when mutations can and can't happen.

There are other ways: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=2112...