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An Empathetic Functional Language

blog.drewolson.org

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Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#11

Post by theseoafs »

pawelkowal wrote: post #10
theseoafs wrote: post #4

> Elixir is a pure functional language No, it is not.

The lack of empathy in your comment is exactly what ends up pushing people (like me) away from functional languages. Your comment just points what is wrong, without any help to guide those who would like to know more, be them the author or a reader. It is interesting because you just dismissed everything the article was about: being empathetic and providing guidance. For the curious, I understand a pure functional la…

I didn't "dismiss" anything. In fact, I didn't bring up anything about the article other than this one factual inaccuracy. Moreover I pointed out why it wasn't purely functional when someone asked me. What else do I need to do in order to be a good commenter in your eyes?

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#12

Post by cwyers »

I feel like this article lacks a lot of details that would make his point. I've spent the past few weeks learning F#, and I see nothing in this article that makes it clear why Elixir is more "empathetic" than F#.

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#13

Post by peregrine »

theseoafs wrote: post #11
pawelkowal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of empathy in your comment is exactly what ends up pushing people (like me) away from functional languages. Your comment just points what is wrong, without any help to guide those who would like to know more, be them the author or a reader. It is interesting because you just dismissed everything the article was about: being empathetic and providing guidance. For the curious, I understand a pure functional la…

I didn't "dismiss" anything. In fact, I didn't bring up anything about the article other than this one factual inaccuracy. Moreover I pointed out why it wasn't purely functional when someone asked me. What else do I need to do in order to be a good commenter in your eyes?

Check the HN guidelines re-comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#14

Post by theseoafs »

peregrine wrote: post #13
theseoafs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't "dismiss" anything. In fact, I didn't bring up anything about the article other than this one factual inaccuracy. Moreover I pointed out why it wasn't purely functional when someone asked me. What else do I need to do in order to be a good commenter in your eyes?

Check the HN guidelines re-comments https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

This is exactly what I did. The author made an error, which I corrected without any other commentary or name-calling, and which the author then corrected. This is the only guideline which is relevant to what I wrote.

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#15

Post by kenko »

"More specifically, empathy for the user.

This empathy is demonstrated in a variety of ways. Many have been extensively discussed: the natural syntax, ... "

I guess the author means "empathy for the user of Ruby"?

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#16

Post by chrismccord »

kenko wrote: post #15

"More specifically, empathy for the user. This empathy is demonstrated in a variety of ways. Many have been extensively discussed: the natural syntax, ... " I guess the author means "empathy for the user of Ruby"?

What Drew is talking about is the syntax is natural in its representation. Things that we think of as keywords in most languages, ie `def`, `if`, `unless`, `defmodule`, etc are all just macros in Elixir which accept arguments. The syntax is incredibly natural when you see how Elixir is represented internally and built up using macros from a tiny base. This is what Drew is talking about, not some Ruby similarities.

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#18

Post by josevalim »

cwyers wrote: post #12

I feel like this article lacks a lot of details that would make his point. I've spent the past few weeks learning F#, and I see nothing in this article that makes it clear why Elixir is more "empathetic" than F#.

Elixir creator here.

As part of my "job", I end-up playing, using and reading a lot about functional programming languages and I like F# a lot. It feels like the team behind F# put a lot of effort in transmitting the concepts in an accessible and clear way (F# Workflow in my opinion are one of such examples). It is not surprise given Microsoft has been introducing functional concepts into languages like C# and VB for a long while.

For Elixir, I have put extra attention into how you to get started with the language because it is not only about learning a functional language (and thinking in terms of recursion, immutability, etc) but also about concurrency and building fault tolerant applications. So help and guidance on every step really matters.

Documentation is extremely important and must be easily accessible. The language should be easy to explore, in your editor or terminal. Error messages should be clear: if you read an error and you don't know what to do next, it is a compiler bug.

I hope I have answered your question. I also would like to say it is not about finding the most empathetic language. They will all have pros and cons, many times even depending on the developer previous experience.

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#19

Post by pawelkowal »

kenko wrote: post #15

"More specifically, empathy for the user. This empathy is demonstrated in a variety of ways. Many have been extensively discussed: the natural syntax, ... " I guess the author means "empathy for the user of Ruby"?

It looks like you skipped all examples given next, which do not seem to be Ruby related at all: the inviting community, the extraordinarily involved creator and the tooling.

Re: An Empathetic Functional Language

#20

Post by kenko »

pawelkowal wrote: post #19
kenko wrote: post #15

"More specifically, empathy for the user. This empathy is demonstrated in a variety of ways. Many have been extensively discussed: the natural syntax, ... " I guess the author means "empathy for the user of Ruby"?

It looks like you skipped all examples given next, which do not seem to be Ruby related at all: the inviting community, the extraordinarily involved creator and the tooling.

I ... well, yes, obviously? Since all I was concerned to address was the claim that the syntax is "natural", I didn't feel any need to include anything else. That's why used ellipses, which mean "the sentence continues, but I'm not quoting the rest".
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