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Very surprised that he is not expert at functional programming... I always assumed that all the folks behind React were driven by a desire to make web programm

Very surprised that he is not expert at functional programming... I always assumed that all the folks behind React were driven by a desire to make web programming more functional generally - that this was an ideal toward which they thought we should be working. And furthermore assumed that this was informed by a deep understanding of functional programming generally and the reasons why it is desirable as a programming methodology. That inspired me to learn more about functional programming... which definitely wasn't a bad thing to do. But I guess I have just been projecting - I have a friend who I've always considered smarter than me who raves about functional programming... and I guess I just thought this is what smart people generally have come to realise is the god's truth about programming. It's good to know in a way that Dan is not in fact this religious about it. I wonder how other React devs feel.

ByThyGrace 8y ago
I wonder, do we have the same friend...
tybit 8y ago
FWIW the creator of react, Jordan Walke is a lot more along the lines of what you had imagined the react team to be like. He is a massive proponent of ML and is currently working on (also the creator of) ReasonML, a new syntax for OCaml, and react in ReasonML. I think there’s an interesting point in there as to the attributes needed to build something new vs scale something existing to a new level. They’re both clearly great at the things they seem to prefer doing.
danabramov 8y ago
I think everybody on the React team is on board with functional principles (like separating side effects from computation and relying on referential transparency). But there’s a reason “deep” functional programming hasn’t gone mainstream — many people (including me) find it hard to contort their product code to express their thoughts in 100% functional way. React has always been about taking the pragmatic parts of FP and making them easy to benefit from without buying into learning category theory or something like that.

ByThyGrace 8y ago

I wonder, do we have the same friend...

tybit 8y ago

FWIW the creator of react, Jordan Walke is a lot more along the lines of what you had imagined the react team to be like. He is a massive proponent of ML and is currently working on (also the creator of) ReasonML, a new syntax for OCaml, and react in ReasonML. I think there’s an interesting point in there as to the attributes needed to build something new vs scale something existing to a new level. They’re both clearly great at the things they seem to prefer doing.

danabramov 8y ago

I think everybody on the React team is on board with functional principles (like separating side effects from computation and relying on referential transparency). But there’s a reason “deep” functional programming hasn’t gone mainstream — many people (including me) find it hard to contort their product code to express their thoughts in 100% functional way. React has always been about taking the pragmatic parts of FP and making them easy to benefit from without buying into learning category theory or something like that.