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I don't think what I'm about to say is necessarily inherently true, but it reflects how things seem to work in practice: It seems to me that part of the proble

I don't think what I'm about to say is necessarily inherently true, but it reflects how things seem to work in practice: It seems to me that part of the problem is that OO doesn't force you to have discipline and/or without constant vigilance (which product owners are never willing to schedule for) the system inevitably gets out of control over time. On the other hand, it seems to me that the core principles of functional programming (immutability, functional purity, construction via composition, and declarative programming) serve as a check that prevents things from getting out of control. That being said, I think it's worth considering that all of the "core principles" of FP that I mentioned could be incorporated into OO. It also seems like FP can be more prone to out of control syntax (e.g. unwise use of point free style).

cwbrandsma 8y ago
Forces discipline is a double edged sword. It can help you keep things clean and understandable, but it can also limit things. For example: I am pretty good with react and redux, but I was more productive with JQuery. JQuery doesn’t have the forced discipline of react+redux, but it gets the job done. At the same time, I’ve seen larger amounts of crap JQuery code than React+Redux. The real issue: discipline has to be learned, often by experience, it isn’t forced. If you force it, then no one knows why things are they way they are.
- simplify 8y ago
  > If you force it, then no one knows why things are they way they are. It's more accurate to say "if you don't teach why' then no one knows why". Forcing or not has nothing to do with it. I would argue "forcing" is strictly better, since learning discipline requires experience in doing things in every other wrong way. While that's great for learning on your own, I wouldn't want developers to "learn discipline" like this in production.
Consultant32452 8y ago
Just my personal anecdote. The only functional programming languages I have extensive experience with are C and JS. I have NEVER seen a sensibly organized or maintained medium to large sized C or JS application. Every time it's been total chaos. In Java projects, there's a 50/50 shot of it being moderately sensible. I'm confident other people have completely different experience. Based on your post it sounds like you have had a different experience, and I have no trouble believing that. Anyways, just my $0.02.
- civility 8y ago
  In this context, C and JavaScript would not be considered functional. They have functions, but that's not what most people mean by "functional". While it's possible to restrict yourself to a functional subset in both of them, they would typically fall into the "imperative" category. Imperative programming languages (like C and JavaScript) don't generally impose any discipline on the users.
  - james-mcelwain 8y ago
    I think this might be a little unfair to JavaScript. No doubt it's a multi-paradigm language, but there's a huuuge FP community in JS, and loads of code bases (esp. in React) are written in a very functional style. Definitely not comparable to passing function pointers around in C.
    - dmix 8y ago
      Almost everyone I've come across who writes JS in a "functional style" has done it because they've had prior experience using a FP language and are applying those lessons to JS. I believe the OP is talking about those FP languages, such as Haskell and Clojure, which have a very different programming experiences. While JS supports it in many ways, it's still not a style inherent in a multi-paradigm language like Javascript nor is it (really) the primary style in popular frameworks - despite the fact inspiration from FP languages/libraries has been increasingly common in popular frontend frameworks. Additionally, even if you go full-bore FP on JS, it's still not the same. Almost no one goes full-bore FP in JS because it really doesn't make sense to nor is it an easy thing to do. (And I say all of this as a frequent user of https://ramdajs.com https://ramdajs.com)
      - cdaringe 8y ago
        Yup. So many good FP => JS langs too.
      - james-mcelwain 8y ago
        Definitely don't disagree with anything you say, just don't think the characterization of JS as a strictly imperative language is fair -- especially when compared with C.
Nition 8y ago
I wish more languages would let you do stuff like mark reference parameters to methods as unable to be changed or reassigned within the method, get a readonly reference to a list without having to make a copy, that sort of thing. It doesn't have to be forced, just give me the option so I can get a guarantee on something if I want to.
- edwinyzh 8y ago
  Like the 'const' parameter in Free Pascal/Delphi: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Const#Const_Parameter http://wiki.freepascal.org/Const#Const_Parameter
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- woah 8y ago
  Rust
- stickfigure 8y ago
  If you mark all fields and variables in Java as final, you get pretty much this experience? If I could go back in time and unilaterally make one change to Java, it would be to make `final` default. But if you just get in the habit of using it (the IDE helps), non-final variables look broken. And once objects have all-final fields, immutability just starts spreading upward in your code.
  - mcintyre1994 8y ago
    I’m a bit surprised they haven’t copied Scala’s case class, where you get immutable fields by default and helpers to copy with updated fields, along with a sane hash and equality implementation. Making immutability easier than the alternative makes a huge difference in practice.
  - zmmmmm 8y ago
    Unfortunately unlike C++ etc constness doesn't propagate inside objects marked final. So final List x = new ArrayList() stops x being reassigned but does nothing to stop the downstream code from mutating the contents of the list.

cwbrandsma 8y ago

Forces discipline is a double edged sword. It can help you keep things clean and understandable, but it can also limit things. For example: I am pretty good with react and redux, but I was more productive with JQuery. JQuery doesn’t have the forced discipline of react+redux, but it gets the job done. At the same time, I’ve seen larger amounts of crap JQuery code than React+Redux. The real issue: discipline has to be learned, often by experience, it isn’t forced. If you force it, then no one knows why things are they way they are.

simplify 8y ago
> If you force it, then no one knows why things are they way they are. It's more accurate to say "if you don't teach why' then no one knows why". Forcing or not has nothing to do with it. I would argue "forcing" is strictly better, since learning discipline requires experience in doing things in every other wrong way. While that's great for learning on your own, I wouldn't want developers to "learn discipline" like this in production.

Consultant32452 8y ago

Just my personal anecdote. The only functional programming languages I have extensive experience with are C and JS. I have NEVER seen a sensibly organized or maintained medium to large sized C or JS application. Every time it's been total chaos. In Java projects, there's a 50/50 shot of it being moderately sensible. I'm confident other people have completely different experience. Based on your post it sounds like you have had a different experience, and I have no trouble believing that. Anyways, just my $0.02.

civility 8y ago
In this context, C and JavaScript would not be considered functional. They have functions, but that's not what most people mean by "functional". While it's possible to restrict yourself to a functional subset in both of them, they would typically fall into the "imperative" category. Imperative programming languages (like C and JavaScript) don't generally impose any discipline on the users.
- james-mcelwain 8y ago
  I think this might be a little unfair to JavaScript. No doubt it's a multi-paradigm language, but there's a huuuge FP community in JS, and loads of code bases (esp. in React) are written in a very functional style. Definitely not comparable to passing function pointers around in C.
  - dmix 8y ago
    Almost everyone I've come across who writes JS in a "functional style" has done it because they've had prior experience using a FP language and are applying those lessons to JS. I believe the OP is talking about those FP languages, such as Haskell and Clojure, which have a very different programming experiences. While JS supports it in many ways, it's still not a style inherent in a multi-paradigm language like Javascript nor is it (really) the primary style in popular frameworks - despite the fact inspiration from FP languages/libraries has been increasingly common in popular frontend frameworks. Additionally, even if you go full-bore FP on JS, it's still not the same. Almost no one goes full-bore FP in JS because it really doesn't make sense to nor is it an easy thing to do. (And I say all of this as a frequent user of https://ramdajs.com https://ramdajs.com)
    - cdaringe 8y ago
      Yup. So many good FP => JS langs too.
    - james-mcelwain 8y ago
      Definitely don't disagree with anything you say, just don't think the characterization of JS as a strictly imperative language is fair -- especially when compared with C.

Nition 8y ago

I wish more languages would let you do stuff like mark reference parameters to methods as unable to be changed or reassigned within the method, get a readonly reference to a list without having to make a copy, that sort of thing. It doesn't have to be forced, just give me the option so I can get a guarantee on something if I want to.

edwinyzh 8y ago
Like the 'const' parameter in Free Pascal/Delphi: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Const#Const_Parameter http://wiki.freepascal.org/Const#Const_Parameter
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
woah 8y ago
Rust
stickfigure 8y ago
If you mark all fields and variables in Java as final, you get pretty much this experience? If I could go back in time and unilaterally make one change to Java, it would be to make `final` default. But if you just get in the habit of using it (the IDE helps), non-final variables look broken. And once objects have all-final fields, immutability just starts spreading upward in your code.
- mcintyre1994 8y ago
  I’m a bit surprised they haven’t copied Scala’s case class, where you get immutable fields by default and helpers to copy with updated fields, along with a sane hash and equality implementation. Making immutability easier than the alternative makes a huge difference in practice.
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  Unfortunately unlike C++ etc constness doesn't propagate inside objects marked final. So final List x = new ArrayList() stops x being reassigned but does nothing to stop the downstream code from mutating the contents of the list.