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How the hell did Kotlin end up on the non functional list, and Scala did? Kotlin code tends to be at least as functional as Scala is. If Kotlin isn't function

by myrryr 7y ago

How the hell did Kotlin end up on the non functional list, and Scala did? Kotlin code tends to be at least as functional as Scala is. If Kotlin isn't functional, then Scala isn't, and if Scala is functional, then Kotlin most certainly is.

jillesvangurp 7y ago
You can do functional in Java as well; and people do. It's probably something purists look down on as inferior; and they'd probably be right. However, it does bring advantages relative to non functional Java code and it's been creeping into the language and frameworks for many years now. Kotlin sort of sits in between Scala and Java. Where Scala only grudgingly allows you to do things like for loops and other imperative stuff, Kotlin is a lot less conflicted about this while providing most of what you'd want out of a functional language as well. It supports both styles pretty well. As a consequence the "my language is more functional than yours" is less relevant these days. If you look at the mainstream languages (Javascript, Java, C#, Rust, Go, Python, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, etc.) they all borrow some things from the functional world. They all have some sort of collections supporting things like map, reduce, fold, etc. They all have some notion of lambda functions and passing function references around. Etc. In several of those languages, this has been the case for quite long as well. All of those languages have in common that they are relatively new. Bucketing languages as functional and non functional is less clear cut than it used to be. In that sense, functional programming has gone mainstream and most programmers are exposed to it now. 25 years ago when I started out, we had some functional programmer pioneers teaching at my university and I got exposed early to what at that time definitely was not very practical in terms of real world applicability. I had my compiler course on parser generator frameworks written in gopher (a haskell predecessor). I even got exposed to monads during that course. You won't see a lot of Kotlin coders talk about monads but when you start talking about side effects, they'll have plenty of solutions nevertheless. Arguably, Scala is a bit more puristic on this front but the practical value over less puristic languages is not that enormous.

by myrryr 7y ago

jillesvangurp 7y ago

You can do functional in Java as well; and people do. It's probably something purists look down on as inferior; and they'd probably be right. However, it does bring advantages relative to non functional Java code and it's been creeping into the language and frameworks for many years now. Kotlin sort of sits in between Scala and Java. Where Scala only grudgingly allows you to do things like for loops and other imperative stuff, Kotlin is a lot less conflicted about this while providing most of what you'd want out of a functional language as well. It supports both styles pretty well. As a consequence the "my language is more functional than yours" is less relevant these days. If you look at the mainstream languages (Javascript, Java, C#, Rust, Go, Python, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, etc.) they all borrow some things from the functional world. They all have some sort of collections supporting things like map, reduce, fold, etc. They all have some notion of lambda functions and passing function references around. Etc. In several of those languages, this has been the case for quite long as well. All of those languages have in common that they are relatively new. Bucketing languages as functional and non functional is less clear cut than it used to be. In that sense, functional programming has gone mainstream and most programmers are exposed to it now. 25 years ago when I started out, we had some functional programmer pioneers teaching at my university and I got exposed early to what at that time definitely was not very practical in terms of real world applicability. I had my compiler course on parser generator frameworks written in gopher (a haskell predecessor). I even got exposed to monads during that course. You won't see a lot of Kotlin coders talk about monads but when you start talking about side effects, they'll have plenty of solutions nevertheless. Arguably, Scala is a bit more puristic on this front but the practical value over less puristic languages is not that enormous.