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Another point in favor of the authors thesis: pure functional programs continue, two decades into the 21st century, to not be widely used in spite of their synt

Another point in favor of the authors thesis: pure functional programs continue, two decades into the 21st century, to not be widely used in spite of their syntactic popularity. Software still continues to not be written at significant scale in Lisp, or Haskell, or even Scala.

pklausler 6y ago
Pure functional programming is (IMO) more of a style than a language phylum. One can (and I can argue should) write C++ in a pure functional style, esp. now with C++17 having sum types.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I agree with this. Functional programming concepts (iterators, stream processing, sum types, first class functions, etc) have made significant inroads into almost every popular programming language: * C++ * Python * JavaScript * Java * C# * Rust
- wtetzner 6y ago
  C++17 has sum types?
  - pklausler 6y ago
    You bet; see std::variant<>. Great for closed-world polymorphism with compilation-time checking of completeness!
logicslave 6y ago
Most people are not smart enough to build software using functional programming
- cpursley 6y ago
  Really? I find the opposite: doing OOP right with all of it's abstractions requires many more brain cycles than functional programming.
  - rvense 6y ago
    PHP is too hard for me. I can't keep track of all the things I need to keep track of not to write unmaintainable, error-prone, insecure garbage. With typed functional languages I do a little better.
    - wolco 6y ago
      I doubt you could write unmaintainable insecure php code. I'm positive you could write error prone garbage in any language.
  - WJW 6y ago
    I think the difference in brain cycles spent for a master in OOP vs a master in FP is far less than the difference between a beginner in either compared to the masters of their style. At least in my experience, OOP has more concepts to learn but each learning step is smaller. FP has less concepts in total but the learning curve has some rather steep parts in it.
dnautics 6y ago
> the authors thesis the author's thesis is that it doesn't matter. And software is written at a significant scale in React (arguably its own language).
runT1ME 6y ago
"Or even Scala" seems false. The majority of Twitter is Scala, Stripe uses Scala extensively, Verizon uses scala for at least a large portion of their TV related code as does Comcast, I could go on. Did it 'take over' the world like some of us hoped? Nope, it is definitely still a niche, but it's quite a large one at this point.

pklausler 6y ago

Pure functional programming is (IMO) more of a style than a language phylum. One can (and I can argue should) write C++ in a pure functional style, esp. now with C++17 having sum types.

throwaway894345 6y ago
I agree with this. Functional programming concepts (iterators, stream processing, sum types, first class functions, etc) have made significant inroads into almost every popular programming language: * C++ * Python * JavaScript * Java * C# * Rust
wtetzner 6y ago
C++17 has sum types?
- pklausler 6y ago
  You bet; see std::variant<>. Great for closed-world polymorphism with compilation-time checking of completeness!

logicslave 6y ago

Most people are not smart enough to build software using functional programming

cpursley 6y ago
Really? I find the opposite: doing OOP right with all of it's abstractions requires many more brain cycles than functional programming.
- rvense 6y ago
  PHP is too hard for me. I can't keep track of all the things I need to keep track of not to write unmaintainable, error-prone, insecure garbage. With typed functional languages I do a little better.
  - wolco 6y ago
    I doubt you could write unmaintainable insecure php code. I'm positive you could write error prone garbage in any language.
- WJW 6y ago
  I think the difference in brain cycles spent for a master in OOP vs a master in FP is far less than the difference between a beginner in either compared to the masters of their style. At least in my experience, OOP has more concepts to learn but each learning step is smaller. FP has less concepts in total but the learning curve has some rather steep parts in it.

dnautics 6y ago

> the authors thesis the author's thesis is that it doesn't matter. And software is written at a significant scale in React (arguably its own language).

runT1ME 6y ago

"Or even Scala" seems false. The majority of Twitter is Scala, Stripe uses Scala extensively, Verizon uses scala for at least a large portion of their TV related code as does Comcast, I could go on. Did it 'take over' the world like some of us hoped? Nope, it is definitely still a niche, but it's quite a large one at this point.