Ask HN: Which functional programming language is the popular enterprise choice?

Post by crimsonalucard » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #78

sheepmullet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course the payoff is immense, you end up with much more maintainable and composable code. However I'm not convinced that many enterprises care much about these properties, as they are often more of a long term win" Actually, you have it backwards. Enterprises care a great deal about long term maintenance and have large codebases. However, they are also very conservative and prefer the tried and tested approach. S…

> If there were 3-4 large enterprise companies with 200kloc+ Haskell projects in use I feel Haskell could see long term 20-30% uptake in the enterprise I would be very surprised if there were not tens of companies with 200kloc+ Haskell codebases. I know that one of them is an enormous enterprise (but the others that I know of are not).

Post by justthistime_ » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

willtim wrote: post #47

paulblei wrote: post #17

Scala is getting big in the enterprise. This list http://www.quora.com/What-startups-or-tech-companies-are-usi... gives a small overview

Scala is not a functional programming language, it is OO first and foremost. It has better support for functional programming than Java 8, Python or Smalltalk. And that in itself is great.

Post by codygman » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 4:12 AM UTC

frik wrote: post #79

willtim wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No IO in Haskell is purely functional. Your Haskell program wires up a computation that is eventually run by the runtime. The wiring up, as described in Haskell, supports referential transparency and composition as only pure code can. Your confusion may arise from people using the term "pure" to differentiate from "monadic".

All I meant is IO (aka input/output) can have side effects outside of the scope of the language environment. Haskell has the IO type to encoding those this side effects: https://wiki.haskell.org/Introduction_to_IO

Post by michaelochurch » Sun, Jul 05, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

codygman wrote: post #84

justthistime_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you have the compile speed issues, the problematic tool chain [...] Did you ever use Haskell? Those issues are far worse in Haskell than in Scala. You just hear more people complaining about Scala, because it is used, while Haskell projects are usually not developed and maintained anymore after the author finishes his PhD.

> Did you ever use Haskell? Those issues are far worse in Haskell than in Scala. I've used both, if anything Haskell is a little faster. > You just hear more people complaining about Scala, because it is used, while Haskell projects are usually not developed and maintained anymore after the author finishes his PhD. FUD. This is simply not true.

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 5:30 AM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #41

gclaramunt wrote: post #34

If you consider Scala functional, I think it wins the popularity contest: used by startups and established companies (Linkedin, Twitter, Meetup, Verizon, Morgan Stanley, Autodesk, HuffPo, etc, etc...) and is not "we use it in a dark corner where nobody cares" and more like "betting the whole farm on it".

I would "bet the whole farm" on Haskell before Scala. That's not to make a dig at Scala. It's way better than Java. It's also really complicated, and the need for JVM compatibility is a big part of that. Then you have the compile speed issues, the problematic tool chain, and the fact that average Java programmers, given Scala, will create unmaintainable nightmares. I'd use Scala over Haskell when I wanted JVM interop…