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Depending on how you define "functional", it's been on the rise for decades. It's just that the goal is a horizon, not a point. For example: Does the language s
by msla 8y ago
Depending on how you define "functional", it's been on the rise for decades. It's just that the goal is a horizon, not a point. For example: Does the language support recursion? It's functional by the old standard. Does it have first-class functions? Ditto, but by a newer one. And so on. These days, it seems to be about making functional composition a major theme, often with side-effect-free styles being favored. Maybe later it'll shift further, to languages derived from Coq or Agda being the things people mean when they talk about functional programming languages.
- incompatible 8y agoRecursion with tail-call elimination, so that you don't run out of stack, still isn't common in mainstream languages.
- phonebanshee 8y agoC++ and the dotNet CLR (so C# etc) support tail recursion elimination. That's a big percentage of widely used languages.
- incompatible 8y agoI didn't know about C++ (and not familiar with dotNet). I suppose it's not in the C++ standard, but apparently some compilers do it, perhaps as a side-effect of optimisation. So it may work in some cases, when using certain compilers, and not others. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34125/which-if-any-c-compilers-do-tail-recursion-optimization https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34125/which-if-any-c-com...
- tempguy9999 8y ago> Does the language support recursion? It's functional by the old standard That's a strange claim, that recursion alone would suffice. I'd say first class functions are more central. Give me that, recursion and closures and I can do the rest. IMO anyway.