5 ms·

Functional programmer here. It's a different way of thinking is all, I don't see it as solving puzzles exactly. It's unfortunate if people see it as being about

by jmfldn 5y ago

Functional programmer here. It's a different way of thinking is all, I don't see it as solving puzzles exactly. It's unfortunate if people see it as being about complexity or being clever. Done well, it should be the opposite. Once you understand the key abstractions, it can make code a lot easier to write and reason about in some cases. That's the joy of it for me. It furthers my day to day software engineering concerns of readability, maintability, testability etc. Nothing more. It's just another tool though and there are many places where it's not appropriate. It's also a personal taste thing, I get that. It's worth persisting with it on a deeper level though just for the sheer joy of those 'a-ha' moments that come. Even if you don't use it in your day job, just bending your brain with different programming paradigms is well worth it.

mdoms 5y ago
I feel like your first and second paragraphs are directly at odds. It's not about "solving puzzles" and you decry cleverness and complexity, but you also think we should persist for joyous "a-ha" moments and brain-bending?
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Ha, yes OK that sounds a bit contradictory so let me clarify. Firstly learning ANY new paradigm is inherently brain bending. By definition right? If you didn't know logic programming or oop you'd have to bend that brain. Secondly, using FP day-to-day doesn't require any deep insight. You can use various tools, monads and whatnot, and not think too hard about it. However, when you really grok the paradigm you will get those a ha moments. The same is true of other paradigms too, but there is a particular satisfaction that comes with deep understanding in this domain that I can't explain. It's kind of beautiful to a certain mind I guess...
  - zz865 5y ago
    > However, when you really grok the paradigm you will get those a ha moments. The same is true of other paradigms too, but there is a particular satisfaction that comes with deep understanding in this domain that I can't explain. It's kind of beautiful to a certain mind I guess... Right but you understand that 90% of developers can't bend their brain that way so does make maintaining functional code very difficult.
    - burnished 5y ago
      Why not?
rbanffy 5y ago
It makes expressing some solutions so elegant and easy it’s totally worth using a functional approach. Other things may be more elegant to express using an imperative approach. Just try to implement recursion in MS 8-bit BASIC.
- Akronymus 5y ago
  AFAIK basic doesn't do stackframes. So a recursive function would overwrite itself. Or maybe it was algol
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    You can do that, but you need to implement your own stacked states and call the function with recursive GOSUBs. Doable, but not fun.
    - Akronymus 5y ago
      Of course you can do your own stack framing in basically any language.But it gets quite unwieldy.

by jmfldn 5y ago

mdoms 5y ago

I feel like your first and second paragraphs are directly at odds. It's not about "solving puzzles" and you decry cleverness and complexity, but you also think we should persist for joyous "a-ha" moments and brain-bending?

jmfldn 5y ago
Ha, yes OK that sounds a bit contradictory so let me clarify. Firstly learning ANY new paradigm is inherently brain bending. By definition right? If you didn't know logic programming or oop you'd have to bend that brain. Secondly, using FP day-to-day doesn't require any deep insight. You can use various tools, monads and whatnot, and not think too hard about it. However, when you really grok the paradigm you will get those a ha moments. The same is true of other paradigms too, but there is a particular satisfaction that comes with deep understanding in this domain that I can't explain. It's kind of beautiful to a certain mind I guess...
- zz865 5y ago
  > However, when you really grok the paradigm you will get those a ha moments. The same is true of other paradigms too, but there is a particular satisfaction that comes with deep understanding in this domain that I can't explain. It's kind of beautiful to a certain mind I guess... Right but you understand that 90% of developers can't bend their brain that way so does make maintaining functional code very difficult.
  - burnished 5y ago
    Why not?

rbanffy 5y ago

It makes expressing some solutions so elegant and easy it’s totally worth using a functional approach. Other things may be more elegant to express using an imperative approach. Just try to implement recursion in MS 8-bit BASIC.

Akronymus 5y ago
AFAIK basic doesn't do stackframes. So a recursive function would overwrite itself. Or maybe it was algol
- rbanffy 5y ago
  You can do that, but you need to implement your own stacked states and call the function with recursive GOSUBs. Doable, but not fun.
  - Akronymus 5y ago
    Of course you can do your own stack framing in basically any language.But it gets quite unwieldy.