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I don't have the experience or knowledge necessary to judge this post, but I’m glad it exists and got posted to Hacker News because I believe the discussion wil

by jchw 6y ago

I don't have the experience or knowledge necessary to judge this post, but I’m glad it exists and got posted to Hacker News because I believe the discussion will end up being insightful. I am not generally a functional programming person. I grew up on C and C++ and went on to learn Python, JS, etc. Eventually I finally wrote actual code in Scala and thought it was fine. Didn’t love the syntax, not great at “thinking” functionally, but loved sum types and pattern matching. I feel like Rust is the perfect mix for me because it gives me the aspects I like about functional programming languages (sum types, pattern matching, strong type inference) combined with composition based polymorphism and an almost C++ like attitude towards meta programming (though obviously with a clean slate.) I do think that learning to “think functionally” better would be good; maybe I should listen to the 4chan meme and read SICP after all. :)

roflc0ptic 6y ago
I’ll be interested to see if this generates thoughtful discussion. It feels like a flame-y, ignorant piece of writing and my gut response is to say flame-y, marginally less ignorant things in response. Which I won’t, because that would be unhelpful and make everyone’s life who read it slightly less pleasant for no reason.
Ericson2314 6y ago
I kinda want every would-be Haskeller to just go use Rust for a few years. That gives us Haskellers more time to pursue "success at minimal costs".
smichel17 6y ago
In my experience so far, SML hit a really sweet spot between ease of learning and features. I never had a "what would I use this for?" moment. Kotlin comes close, but is less elegant and especially lacks full pattern matching. Unfortunately, sml is used approximately nowhere. Not sure why, but I also haven't used ocaml yet. Maybe one day. My hosting provider (hcoop.net)'s domtool is written in SML, and I hope to hack on it at some point.
- vnorilo 6y ago
  +1 for SML. I've found F# scratches some of that itch. It is a CLR language with all the up- and downsides that come with .net

by jchw 6y ago

roflc0ptic 6y ago

I’ll be interested to see if this generates thoughtful discussion. It feels like a flame-y, ignorant piece of writing and my gut response is to say flame-y, marginally less ignorant things in response. Which I won’t, because that would be unhelpful and make everyone’s life who read it slightly less pleasant for no reason.

Ericson2314 6y ago

I kinda want every would-be Haskeller to just go use Rust for a few years. That gives us Haskellers more time to pursue "success at minimal costs".

smichel17 6y ago

In my experience so far, SML hit a really sweet spot between ease of learning and features. I never had a "what would I use this for?" moment. Kotlin comes close, but is less elegant and especially lacks full pattern matching. Unfortunately, sml is used approximately nowhere. Not sure why, but I also haven't used ocaml yet. Maybe one day. My hosting provider (hcoop.net)'s domtool is written in SML, and I hope to hack on it at some point.

vnorilo 6y ago
+1 for SML. I've found F# scratches some of that itch. It is a CLR language with all the up- and downsides that come with .net