3 ms·

Isn't performance a problem? Technically you can memoize to eliminate constant recomputing of state, but that itself is overhead. Sometimes I try to use a funct

• eru 11y ago
  It depends on what kind of performance problems you have. Some algorithms are hard to express in pure, strict functional settings. (There's even an impossibility theorem for a few algorithms, but that theorem doesn't apply to pure, lazy languages.) That being said, the worst asymptotic slowdown is logarithmic---because you can always simulate random access memory. On a more practical side, you have constant factors to worry about, and things like caches. Look at eg Don Stewarts work for how to deal with these in a functional language. (And, in practice, there's no shame in throwing in the towel and either interfacing with other languages, or even switching to them.)