4 ms·

Seriously, what's up with these comments? If the examples are plain wrong, wouldn't it be more prudent to create an issue in the repo? Also it seems to be a lot

Seriously, what's up with these comments? If the examples are plain wrong, wouldn't it be more prudent to create an issue in the repo? Also it seems to be a lot of hate for the use of JavaScript. It's a great thing that they chose the most widely available language. We get it, you know a purely functional language. Good for you! I am really disappointed in the general, holier-than-thou attitude here.

codemac 10y ago
And in fact, the learning of new terminology and a new syntax/libraries/etc as always made it more difficult for me to learn new languages. I now try to learn new concepts in a language I'm more familiar with, and then learn the language/syntax. I find this repo wonderful!
- vsviridov 10y ago
  you might enjoy this then: https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide/ https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide/
DeadReckoning 10y ago
People want to feel like they're smarter than everyone else, basically.
bhrgunatha 10y ago
I think it would be even better if the repo had the javascript examples alongside another language which is more widely accepted as a functional language for example Haskell, Scala or Clojure. Seeing examples together to me is an even stronger way of illustrating the concepts and differences between implementations.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  A more serious objection is that many structures used in functional programming have associated equational laws, which JavaScript provides a very poor medium to formulate - never mind actually prove. The ability to query the physical identity of every object makes the equational theory of JavaScript objects completely trivial: every object is equal to itself (physically in memory) and nothing else.
knowThySelfx 10y ago
Perhaps its a good thing to go through the newbie guidelines once in a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Chattered 10y ago
We know Haskell variants or maybe scalaz. I don't get why these now represent pure functional programming. Scala isn't even close to pure. This is just jargon for languages that can represent very abstract mathematical concepts. I am happy to see these ideas work their way into any language. I just question the utility here. So there are potentially abstract things going on in my code? Great. So what? I can maybe notice it and get back to work. Haskell gives me more. It says I can define some of the abstractions and write code against them. More realistically, it allows someone smarter than me to define the abstractions which I can then code against. For better or worse, this is expected now of even beginner Haskell programmers, where "monad" rears its head as an inbuilt type class, in inbuilt functions and some of the earliest type errors. In Haskell, a monad isn't just an abstract concept that you can see if you squint hard enough at your code. A monad is code. It has an implementation as a typeclass, in Ocaml as a module type. How is it implemented in JS? I am also sceptical that these abstractions are useful outside statically typed languages. Haskellers habitually ride towers of these constructs and I for one couldn't do it without a type inferencer. I already find scalaz too painful for me personally.

codemac 10y ago

And in fact, the learning of new terminology and a new syntax/libraries/etc as always made it more difficult for me to learn new languages. I now try to learn new concepts in a language I'm more familiar with, and then learn the language/syntax. I find this repo wonderful!

vsviridov 10y ago
you might enjoy this then: https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide/ https://drboolean.gitbooks.io/mostly-adequate-guide/

DeadReckoning 10y ago

People want to feel like they're smarter than everyone else, basically.

bhrgunatha 10y ago

I think it would be even better if the repo had the javascript examples alongside another language which is more widely accepted as a functional language for example Haskell, Scala or Clojure. Seeing examples together to me is an even stronger way of illustrating the concepts and differences between implementations.

catnaroek 10y ago
A more serious objection is that many structures used in functional programming have associated equational laws, which JavaScript provides a very poor medium to formulate - never mind actually prove. The ability to query the physical identity of every object makes the equational theory of JavaScript objects completely trivial: every object is equal to itself (physically in memory) and nothing else.

knowThySelfx 10y ago

Perhaps its a good thing to go through the newbie guidelines once in a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Chattered 10y ago

We know Haskell variants or maybe scalaz. I don't get why these now represent pure functional programming. Scala isn't even close to pure. This is just jargon for languages that can represent very abstract mathematical concepts. I am happy to see these ideas work their way into any language. I just question the utility here. So there are potentially abstract things going on in my code? Great. So what? I can maybe notice it and get back to work. Haskell gives me more. It says I can define some of the abstractions and write code against them. More realistically, it allows someone smarter than me to define the abstractions which I can then code against. For better or worse, this is expected now of even beginner Haskell programmers, where "monad" rears its head as an inbuilt type class, in inbuilt functions and some of the earliest type errors. In Haskell, a monad isn't just an abstract concept that you can see if you squint hard enough at your code. A monad is code. It has an implementation as a typeclass, in Ocaml as a module type. How is it implemented in JS? I am also sceptical that these abstractions are useful outside statically typed languages. Haskellers habitually ride towers of these constructs and I for one couldn't do it without a type inferencer. I already find scalaz too painful for me personally.