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Chalk me up as someone who disagrees. Personally, I find recursive transformations of immutable structures far easier to reason about than iterative modificati

Chalk me up as someone who disagrees. Personally, I find recursive transformations of immutable structures far easier to reason about than iterative modifications to mutable structures. At least in some cases, I think that's the expected result: consider the difficulty of reversing a singly linked list in-place and reversing it applicatively.

chromatic 16y ago
Perhaps the difficulty is in designing the appropriate data structures and identifying the correct transformation functions. In other words, designing a good FP program is difficult just like designing a good OO program is difficult.
edifice 16y ago
It definitely depends on the algorithm. It also depends on the language. A lot of the difficulty of learning Haskell, for example, is in the type system. A dynamically typed FP lang like Clojure has a shallower learning curve.
- iustin 16y ago
  It is true, but it's also unfortunate—I think a lot of Haskell's strengths come from its type system. So what makes Haskell worth learning also makes it hard to learn Haskell :)
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Haskell's type system is unfortunate, because for most programmers, 80+% of the benefit comes from how it utterly nails the basics (checking variant type coverage in pattern matching, typeclasses), but the language community is focused on the cutting edge top .003%, because that's where the research papers are.
  - strait 16y ago
    After working through a few of my own Haskell projects, I eventually found the type system disappointing. A better design would have made it even more sophisticated and harder to learn, IMO. That's the price to pay for being purely functional. Instead, I felt that certain design trade-offs were made, which in effect, make the type system awkward and tend to lead to inflexibility in writing ambitious, comprehensive programs.
    - silentbicycle 16y ago
      Any examples you care to share?
  - nickik 16y ago
    Iit's also unfortunate - I think a lot of Clojure's strengths come from its macro system. So what makes Clojure worth learning also makes it hard to learn Clojure :) There is stuff to learn in every language :)

chromatic 16y ago

Perhaps the difficulty is in designing the appropriate data structures and identifying the correct transformation functions. In other words, designing a good FP program is difficult just like designing a good OO program is difficult.

edifice 16y ago

It definitely depends on the algorithm. It also depends on the language. A lot of the difficulty of learning Haskell, for example, is in the type system. A dynamically typed FP lang like Clojure has a shallower learning curve.

iustin 16y ago
It is true, but it's also unfortunate—I think a lot of Haskell's strengths come from its type system. So what makes Haskell worth learning also makes it hard to learn Haskell :)
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  Haskell's type system is unfortunate, because for most programmers, 80+% of the benefit comes from how it utterly nails the basics (checking variant type coverage in pattern matching, typeclasses), but the language community is focused on the cutting edge top .003%, because that's where the research papers are.
- strait 16y ago
  After working through a few of my own Haskell projects, I eventually found the type system disappointing. A better design would have made it even more sophisticated and harder to learn, IMO. That's the price to pay for being purely functional. Instead, I felt that certain design trade-offs were made, which in effect, make the type system awkward and tend to lead to inflexibility in writing ambitious, comprehensive programs.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    Any examples you care to share?
- nickik 16y ago
  Iit's also unfortunate - I think a lot of Clojure's strengths come from its macro system. So what makes Clojure worth learning also makes it hard to learn Clojure :) There is stuff to learn in every language :)