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Hoping for a little advice: I'm trying to push for some development culture changes at work, one of which is doing more local, incremental refactors rather than

by rakpol 10y ago

Hoping for a little advice: I'm trying to push for some development culture changes at work, one of which is doing more local, incremental refactors rather than large, all-at-once changes (i.e. the sort of thing for which one books 'architecture meetings'). Since we'll hopefully be massaging large parts of the codebase, there's an opportunity to jump into something new with both feet. Question: what do you think of the thesis of pure4j [1] vis. frege [2]? Namely, are the advantages gained by switching to a haskell-like language far above those attained by simply forcing effects into a small part of the codebase? [1]: https://github.com/pure4j/pure4j https://github.com/pure4j/pure4j [2]: https://github.com/Frege/frege https://github.com/Frege/frege

codygman 10y ago
I can't speak for pure4j, but I would be very wary about suggesting Frege at my workplace to (what I'm assuming are) Java programmers. I feel like some Java programmers would have almost as much culture shock with something like Haskell as some of the php programmers at IMVU apparently did.
- rakpol 10y ago
  Fair point, but it might almost be worth it just to suggest it just to see what the opposition is like -- if there isn't much, or any, go with Frege; otherwise, fall back to pure4j. I'd imagine framing the decision as picking from two choices would improve the odds of at least one being selected.
pron 10y ago
You may want to consider http://www.ocamljava.org/ http://www.ocamljava.org/ instead of Frege.
- rakpol 10y ago
  That definitely made the short list! I picked up ocaml for a side project and enjoyed the language quite a bit. However, ocamljava is either dead or dormant at this point (last commit to master in June of last year) and it seemed to only have had one major contributor -- it would seem irresponsible to adopt such a solution in light of that.
  - pron 10y ago
    In that case, it's almost as irresponsible to adopt Frege... It's not like it's got any real traction, either.
    - rakpol 10y ago
      Aah, fair point, it is pretty niche. Still, merely going off of their comparative contribution graphs [1] [2] and issue trackers [3] [4], it seems like Frege has a fair bit more throughput: for better or for worse, it seems like more _things_ are happening. Although I'll be the first to admit it's a misleading metric for determining the maturity of a project, it's still something. Imagine finding a bug in Frege: it seems like they merge even small patches from contributors, whereas ocamljava is essentially a one man show. Adopting ocamljava would probably mean forking and maintaining it too, whereas there's a possibility of just contributing to Frege. That's all just my opinion, of course, and I hardly have enough industry experience to back up its validity! 'Just sanity checking my reasoning :) [1]: https://github.com/Frege/frege/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Frege/frege/graphs/contributors [2]: https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/graphs/contributors https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/graphs/contributors [3]: https://github.com/Frege/frege/issues https://github.com/Frege/frege/issues [4]: https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/issues https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/issues
      - yawaramin 10y ago
        Did you consider Scala? I think it has great support for the kinds of changes you're pushing for.
        rakpol 10y ago
        Yes, but I have ... reservations. Same as with OCaml, I took on a small project with Scala and enjoyed the language, but only after carving out a subset of it that was palatable. Although it fits the bill, I'd be worried that enforcing conventions would become a large burden. Unlike Frege where I (might? Frege's the only language of the three that I haven't investigated thoroughly) can point learners to essentially any Haskell tutorial and have them vaguely do 'the right thing', there exists a subset of Scala developers who use the language like Java with type inference. With Frege I could, for example, merely enforce the minimal usage of IO or State, but doing so with Scala is more complicated (maybe force the usage of cats/scalaz and their equivalent monads? It's still very easy to not use them, however). If there were an equivalent to F# on the JVM I'd settle on it in a heartbeat, but the dearth of well supported, pure functional languages makes this a tough choice. All in all, I'll probably go with pure4j, but it would be nice to stop writing Java at some point in my career.
chadaustin 10y ago
Personally, I think you'll have more success with something more gradual than a complete syntactic overhaul. I've never used pure4j or frege but it sounds like pure4j is something you could try out incrementally, which could be quite immediately useful for your team. Best of luck!
- rakpol 10y ago
  The idea behind both would be to introduce it incrementally, carving out parts of the codebase to be rewritten one section at a time. You're right, though; pure4j offers an immediate and easily obtainable win, so it'd definitely be an easier pill to swallow. Thanks :)
Buttons840 10y ago
Scala is an obvious option as well. I haven't used Scala but it's surely more palatable to Haskellers than plain Java. Also. There is work underway to enable GHC to compile for the JVM.
- wtracy 10y ago
  To expand on this suggestion: Scala isn't big on purity (AFAIK the language has no concept of pure functions out of the box) but it is big on immutable data types, and mostly-pure functions arise naturally when you're working with immutable types. Immutable types happen to be something that is familiar and comfortable to Java developers. I would therefore expect to meet a lot less resistance to "syntactic sugar and immutable classes" than "functional programming with pure functions" even if the end result is 80 percent the same.
  - roflc0ptic 10y ago
    This was the compromise our team made. Our team was having a bad time dealing with Spring. Our lead dev is a functional buff who really likes Haskell, and got us all hype about trying something new. We picked scala in lieu of Haskell because the learning curve with Haskell was a much harder sell. We avoid mutable data types unless there's a compelling reason (interop with Java libraries, for example), and most of our functions are implicitly pure. ScalaZ might have some purity constraint, idk. 5 months in with Scala and it has been a wonderful experience. Now I just have to convince our front end dev to switch over to Scala.js...
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      We tried the same thing, but it did not go well at all. We picked scala because people should be able to learn it easier and more gradually. But we found as people learned FP using scala, they realized how much scala held them back. We ended up redoing a PHP project in scala, then as it was 80% done redoing it again in haskell. And then from there out using haskell for everything.
      - 10y ago

by rakpol 10y ago

codygman 10y ago

I can't speak for pure4j, but I would be very wary about suggesting Frege at my workplace to (what I'm assuming are) Java programmers. I feel like some Java programmers would have almost as much culture shock with something like Haskell as some of the php programmers at IMVU apparently did.

rakpol 10y ago
Fair point, but it might almost be worth it just to suggest it just to see what the opposition is like -- if there isn't much, or any, go with Frege; otherwise, fall back to pure4j. I'd imagine framing the decision as picking from two choices would improve the odds of at least one being selected.

pron 10y ago

You may want to consider http://www.ocamljava.org/ http://www.ocamljava.org/ instead of Frege.

rakpol 10y ago
That definitely made the short list! I picked up ocaml for a side project and enjoyed the language quite a bit. However, ocamljava is either dead or dormant at this point (last commit to master in June of last year) and it seemed to only have had one major contributor -- it would seem irresponsible to adopt such a solution in light of that.
- pron 10y ago
  In that case, it's almost as irresponsible to adopt Frege... It's not like it's got any real traction, either.
  - rakpol 10y ago
    Aah, fair point, it is pretty niche. Still, merely going off of their comparative contribution graphs [1] [2] and issue trackers [3] [4], it seems like Frege has a fair bit more throughput: for better or for worse, it seems like more _things_ are happening. Although I'll be the first to admit it's a misleading metric for determining the maturity of a project, it's still something. Imagine finding a bug in Frege: it seems like they merge even small patches from contributors, whereas ocamljava is essentially a one man show. Adopting ocamljava would probably mean forking and maintaining it too, whereas there's a possibility of just contributing to Frege. That's all just my opinion, of course, and I hardly have enough industry experience to back up its validity! 'Just sanity checking my reasoning :) [1]: https://github.com/Frege/frege/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Frege/frege/graphs/contributors [2]: https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/graphs/contributors https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/graphs/contributors [3]: https://github.com/Frege/frege/issues https://github.com/Frege/frege/issues [4]: https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/issues https://github.com/xclerc/ocamljava/issues
    - yawaramin 10y ago
      Did you consider Scala? I think it has great support for the kinds of changes you're pushing for.
      - rakpol 10y ago
        Yes, but I have ... reservations. Same as with OCaml, I took on a small project with Scala and enjoyed the language, but only after carving out a subset of it that was palatable. Although it fits the bill, I'd be worried that enforcing conventions would become a large burden. Unlike Frege where I (might? Frege's the only language of the three that I haven't investigated thoroughly) can point learners to essentially any Haskell tutorial and have them vaguely do 'the right thing', there exists a subset of Scala developers who use the language like Java with type inference. With Frege I could, for example, merely enforce the minimal usage of IO or State, but doing so with Scala is more complicated (maybe force the usage of cats/scalaz and their equivalent monads? It's still very easy to not use them, however). If there were an equivalent to F# on the JVM I'd settle on it in a heartbeat, but the dearth of well supported, pure functional languages makes this a tough choice. All in all, I'll probably go with pure4j, but it would be nice to stop writing Java at some point in my career.

chadaustin 10y ago

Personally, I think you'll have more success with something more gradual than a complete syntactic overhaul. I've never used pure4j or frege but it sounds like pure4j is something you could try out incrementally, which could be quite immediately useful for your team. Best of luck!

rakpol 10y ago
The idea behind both would be to introduce it incrementally, carving out parts of the codebase to be rewritten one section at a time. You're right, though; pure4j offers an immediate and easily obtainable win, so it'd definitely be an easier pill to swallow. Thanks :)

Buttons840 10y ago

Scala is an obvious option as well. I haven't used Scala but it's surely more palatable to Haskellers than plain Java. Also. There is work underway to enable GHC to compile for the JVM.

wtracy 10y ago
To expand on this suggestion: Scala isn't big on purity (AFAIK the language has no concept of pure functions out of the box) but it is big on immutable data types, and mostly-pure functions arise naturally when you're working with immutable types. Immutable types happen to be something that is familiar and comfortable to Java developers. I would therefore expect to meet a lot less resistance to "syntactic sugar and immutable classes" than "functional programming with pure functions" even if the end result is 80 percent the same.
- roflc0ptic 10y ago
  This was the compromise our team made. Our team was having a bad time dealing with Spring. Our lead dev is a functional buff who really likes Haskell, and got us all hype about trying something new. We picked scala in lieu of Haskell because the learning curve with Haskell was a much harder sell. We avoid mutable data types unless there's a compelling reason (interop with Java libraries, for example), and most of our functions are implicitly pure. ScalaZ might have some purity constraint, idk. 5 months in with Scala and it has been a wonderful experience. Now I just have to convince our front end dev to switch over to Scala.js...
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    We tried the same thing, but it did not go well at all. We picked scala because people should be able to learn it easier and more gradually. But we found as people learned FP using scala, they realized how much scala held them back. We ended up redoing a PHP project in scala, then as it was 80% done redoing it again in haskell. And then from there out using haskell for everything.
    - 10y ago