Why I Prefer Functional Programming

Post by iainmerrick » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 8:34 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #110

zabzonk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost never use `new` in modern C++, and you would never use it as you suggest because it wouldn't compile, you would simply say: MyType x; C++ is nothing at all like Java.

Sorry, you'd need to use the MyType* x to use the `new` keyword; it's been awhile. It doesn't really deter from my point though; in order to heap-allocate something you have to use a pointer, and you end up doing something not that dissimilar from Java . > C++ is nothing at all like Java. Is that supposed to be a joke? Java was marketed specifically towards C++ engineers...

Post by collyw » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #33

biznickman wrote: post #2

I think this most effectively demonstrates why I like a lot of OOP: it can be verbose. This is example function is relatively illegible: alignCenter :: [String] -> [String] alignCenter xs = map (\x -> replicate (div (n - length x) 2) ' ' ++ x) xs where n = maximum (map length xs) One of the most verbose languages I've used, Objective C, has made this a best practice. Despite the brackets (which scare people off), it…

This opinion is flameworthy and stereotypes heavily: what seems to happen in FP is that the overall community is substantially math-IQ smarter than the imperative languages. Alas, that ALSO means the overall community loses social-IQ in the process. This leads to: 1) higher barrier to entry for the general programmers, in language semantics, documentation, examples... 2) a tendency to overabstract, underdocument, and…

Post by tome » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 9:05 AM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #17

biznickman wrote: post #2

I think this most effectively demonstrates why I like a lot of OOP: it can be verbose. This is example function is relatively illegible: alignCenter :: [String] -> [String] alignCenter xs = map (\x -> replicate (div (n - length x) 2) ' ' ++ x) xs where n = maximum (map length xs) One of the most verbose languages I've used, Objective C, has made this a best practice. Despite the brackets (which scare people off), it…

To me this looks like perl golfing, but for some reason perl golfing is bad but writing extremely terse functional programs is not. Personally I like to combine both approaches. In swift I would write something like this: let l = ["abc", "ab", "abcdef", "abcdefgh"] width = l.reduce(0, { max($0, $1.count) }) let centered = l.map({ (line: String) -> String in var padding = (width - line.count) / 2 return String(repeati…

Post by AllegedAlec » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

Post by tome » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

kbuchanan wrote: post #20

AlexCoventry wrote: post #18

I prefer functional programming because referentially transparent functions are easier to reason about and test. Brevity of control flow hasn't brought me much benefit.

Couldn't agree more! ... I just had to laugh to myself at how this, THIS is why functional programming is so... rarely adopted. Like, "referentially transparent functions"?! What happened to `website.run.now!`?!