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This post lists 9 points, but the first 7 are all variations of "mutable data structures suck in a pure language!" and the other 2 are "look at all these fuckin

This post lists 9 points, but the first 7 are all variations of "mutable data structures suck in a pure language!" and the other 2 are "look at all these fucking idiots who talk about purely functional programming!" So the first 7 points are true because pure functional programming, by definition does not support mutable data structures very well. It is what it says on the tin. If you go on stack overflow you'll find no shortage of ill-informed, unhelpful input about imperative programming languages. I think it's very strange to call a social phenomenon that is universal in software that affects every language community is a disadvantage of something as broad as "purely functional programming". If you want good discussion, go on the mailing lists or the IRC channels. #haskell is a very good channel with a lot of active professionals who love answering questions. I am a professional Haskell programmer, AMA.

skybrian 10y ago
At least point 4 seems to be about algorithms, not data structures? That is, there's nothing up front that says graph algorithms must be faster using mutable data structures, but that is apparently the case, so far.
- lmm 10y ago
  There are some graph algorithms that are probably most easily expressed with a mutable, garbage-collected graph, sure. This shouldn't be something that you have to implement yourself though; if you really need a garbage-collected graph datastructure, surely you just use a library that provides one.
- danharaj 10y ago
  The form of an algorithm is informed by the data structures that it uses and a data structure is informed by the algorithms that use it. Point 4 is implicitly about mutable collections.
- Mathnerd314 10y ago
  Any imperative algorithm / data-structure, e.g. union-find, can be implemented purely by using an IntMap for memory and a State monad, with roughly equivalent performance: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/union-find https://hackage.haskell.org/package/union-find As to whether that actually counts as "purely functional programming", I can't say. Honestly the whole term seems quite misleading. https://chadaustin.me/2015/09/haskell-is-not-a-purely-functional-language/ https://chadaustin.me/2015/09/haskell-is-not-a-purely-functi...
  - sclv 10y ago
    The reason he cites union-find is that it is one of the only significant data structures where sustained research hasn't either produced an immutable version with the same performance as the mutable one or demonstrated that one can't exist. It's a great puzzle, but it's not a huge drawback because subbing in IntMap or something really _does_ give adequate performance for typical union-find cases (unification or the like). Which is to say, the performance gap left to be closed is almost certainly _not_ where the important improvements to unification algorithms are made (which have to do with being able to impose a lot more particular structure on the types of things being unified, etc).

skybrian 10y ago

At least point 4 seems to be about algorithms, not data structures? That is, there's nothing up front that says graph algorithms must be faster using mutable data structures, but that is apparently the case, so far.

lmm 10y ago
There are some graph algorithms that are probably most easily expressed with a mutable, garbage-collected graph, sure. This shouldn't be something that you have to implement yourself though; if you really need a garbage-collected graph datastructure, surely you just use a library that provides one.
danharaj 10y ago
The form of an algorithm is informed by the data structures that it uses and a data structure is informed by the algorithms that use it. Point 4 is implicitly about mutable collections.
Mathnerd314 10y ago
Any imperative algorithm / data-structure, e.g. union-find, can be implemented purely by using an IntMap for memory and a State monad, with roughly equivalent performance: https://hackage.haskell.org/package/union-find https://hackage.haskell.org/package/union-find As to whether that actually counts as "purely functional programming", I can't say. Honestly the whole term seems quite misleading. https://chadaustin.me/2015/09/haskell-is-not-a-purely-functional-language/ https://chadaustin.me/2015/09/haskell-is-not-a-purely-functi...
- sclv 10y ago
  The reason he cites union-find is that it is one of the only significant data structures where sustained research hasn't either produced an immutable version with the same performance as the mutable one or demonstrated that one can't exist. It's a great puzzle, but it's not a huge drawback because subbing in IntMap or something really _does_ give adequate performance for typical union-find cases (unification or the like). Which is to say, the performance gap left to be closed is almost certainly _not_ where the important improvements to unification algorithms are made (which have to do with being able to impose a lot more particular structure on the types of things being unified, etc).