Functional programming should be the future of software
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Functional programming should be the future of software
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Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#2The article picks on Javascript (of course) however you can write almost exclusively functional code in Javascript with the help of Rambda, fp-ts or the like. Yes, there is no "compiler" (outside of tsc) that will help you (yet) but stylistically, it's possible.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#3Imo functional programming is one of those things that makes sense from a theoretical perspective, but comes with compromises when it comes to reality.
The thing about functional programming is that the confidence you get from immutability comes at the cost of increased memory usage thanks to data duplication. It's probably going to create a ceiling in terms of the absolute performance which can be reached.
There are just other ways to solve the problems like NPE's and memory safety, like ADT's and ownership rules, which don't come at the same costs as FP.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#4The article picks on Javascript (of course) however you can write almost exclusively functional code in Javascript with the help of Rambda, fp-ts or the like. Yes, there is no "compiler" (outside of tsc) that will help you (yet) but stylistically, it's possible.
You can write exclusively functional code in pretty much any language can't you?
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#5This article would have benefited a lot by including a few examples of functional expressions and how they compare with other paradigms.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#6Imo functional programming is one of those things that makes sense from a theoretical perspective, but comes with compromises when it comes to reality. The thing about functional programming is that the confidence you get from immutability comes at the cost of increased memory usage thanks to data duplication. It's probably going to create a ceiling in terms of the absolute performance which can be reached. There are…
From my experience if you are not dogmatic/extremist about it you can gain a lot, so I try to do things in a functional way in my non functional languages.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#7It would be helpful if the article started off defining what a functional language is. A lot of languages have functional features but are not “purely” functional. I think most would agree there’s a spectrum; dynamic vs static, eager vs lazy, mutable vs immutable.
So what flavor of functional programming one might ask, since javascript is a dynamically typed flavor that is ubiquitous nowadays? The fine article suggests drum roll... Haskell! The author believes a statically typed and lazily evaluated language is what we all should be using. Unlike the various other dynamicaly typed options like small talk or scheme or lisp. Standard ML and Ocaml being statically typed are eagerly evaluated.
Most popular languages have added a lot of functional features in recent years so it’s clear the world is moving that way, imo.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#8The article picks on Javascript (of course) however you can write almost exclusively functional code in Javascript with the help of Rambda, fp-ts or the like. Yes, there is no "compiler" (outside of tsc) that will help you (yet) but stylistically, it's possible.
Javascript is already functional enough without these libraries. Rambda et al make simple code unnecessarily complex or verbose, and complex code unreadable
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#9The article picks on Javascript (of course) however you can write almost exclusively functional code in Javascript with the help of Rambda, fp-ts or the like. Yes, there is no "compiler" (outside of tsc) that will help you (yet) but stylistically, it's possible.
You can write exclusively functional code in pretty much any language can't you?
Go is probably one popular exception.
Re: Functional programming should be the future of software
#10Imo functional programming is one of those things that makes sense from a theoretical perspective, but comes with compromises when it comes to reality. The thing about functional programming is that the confidence you get from immutability comes at the cost of increased memory usage thanks to data duplication. It's probably going to create a ceiling in terms of the absolute performance which can be reached. There are…
From my experience if you are not dogmatic/extremist about it you can gain a lot, so I try to do things in a functional way in my non functional languages.
Yeah I totally agree. I think writing code which is "functional where possible" is super powerful and offers a ton of advantages. Trying to cover that last 20% of cases where you have to bend over backwards to create a performant functional solution, to solve a problem which is trivial with a little bit of mutability, doesn't make sense.