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I'll also add that scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery. I get that i

I'll also add that scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery. I get that it is probably more intellectually stimulating for many engineers than the project they are working on, but it also reflects in over engineering of distributed systems for simple problems. I do wonder if there is really any net gains for a company to go the functional route. I would love to see some research on this as people have been championing it for decades now, and seems suspiciously absent!

hocuspocus 5y ago
> I'll also add that scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery. Then how do you explain that a very significant number of "top" tech companies have teams who manage to deliver products written in Scala or other FP languages?
- captaincaveman 5y ago
  Teams have managed to deliver products in also sorts of languages, Cobol for example. Did the choice of language benefit the delivery, maintenance and TCO is my question. If I choose Haskell/Scala over Java (FYI as a programmer I'm not a fan of Java) what benefit will it actually bring the business, and does it out weight the negatives, over what time frame and how much risk?
  - hocuspocus 5y ago
    There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. Lots of tech companies have proved that you don't need to follow Google and constrain your workforce to a small list of vetted languages. Most teams who chose Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Rust... are productive and able to deliver products.
    - captaincaveman 5y ago
      But my point is does moving to FP, which is the direction of change, actually bring any benefits to the actual outcome? My question is simple as that, yet as engineers we get lost in the detail of the doing and some hand wavy suggestion that it makes things better, yet where is the actual evidence for this? Be pro FP or not, or any other programming paradigm, lets say logic based (prolog etc), where is there any measures on how it benefits outcome. I appreciate this isn't something that can be easily measured, but that is arguably a key problem with the state of the industry, that its emotion, intuition and bandwagon driven.
    - captaincaveman 5y ago
      > There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. That is my personal experience, a tiny data point, again where are the studies that give some actual useful guidance? I wrote a great project using Racket, everyone should use Racket, its cool, lets blog it ... gains momentum, its new its exciting it promises change ... people start to have different experiance, bad decisions are made ... new bandwagon, lets all rush to that yay. Having been around for long enough to see this cycle, I think it's right to ask for some well thought evidence, or gathering of trade offs to help decision making.
sideeffffect 5y ago
> scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery This feels to me like a low effort and vague criticism. Essentially, this is a complaint about an arbitrary group of developers that they're playing around with tech (whatever that tech might be) instead of delivering... Obviously, in this case you can't say that specific thing about Python/JS/PHP/whatever developers, because "monads and type theory" just don't apply in these languages. (I know Python has MyPy, but let's put that aside for the simplicity of the argument.) But for some non-scala/functional engineers, somebody could complain that they're wasting time playing with GUI frameworks, testing frameworks, async libraries, whatever... The truth is, people can clown around with any technology, just as people can deliver with Scala/FP or something else.

hocuspocus 5y ago

> I'll also add that scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery. Then how do you explain that a very significant number of "top" tech companies have teams who manage to deliver products written in Scala or other FP languages?

captaincaveman 5y ago
Teams have managed to deliver products in also sorts of languages, Cobol for example. Did the choice of language benefit the delivery, maintenance and TCO is my question. If I choose Haskell/Scala over Java (FYI as a programmer I'm not a fan of Java) what benefit will it actually bring the business, and does it out weight the negatives, over what time frame and how much risk?
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. Lots of tech companies have proved that you don't need to follow Google and constrain your workforce to a small list of vetted languages. Most teams who chose Haskell, OCaml, Scala, Rust... are productive and able to deliver products.
  - captaincaveman 5y ago
    But my point is does moving to FP, which is the direction of change, actually bring any benefits to the actual outcome? My question is simple as that, yet as engineers we get lost in the detail of the doing and some hand wavy suggestion that it makes things better, yet where is the actual evidence for this? Be pro FP or not, or any other programming paradigm, lets say logic based (prolog etc), where is there any measures on how it benefits outcome. I appreciate this isn't something that can be easily measured, but that is arguably a key problem with the state of the industry, that its emotion, intuition and bandwagon driven.
  - captaincaveman 5y ago
    > There are technical tradeoffs everywhere. But you cannot make a caricature of FP developers, supposedly not willing to spend energy on delivering products. That is my personal experience, a tiny data point, again where are the studies that give some actual useful guidance? I wrote a great project using Racket, everyone should use Racket, its cool, lets blog it ... gains momentum, its new its exciting it promises change ... people start to have different experiance, bad decisions are made ... new bandwagon, lets all rush to that yay. Having been around for long enough to see this cycle, I think it's right to ask for some well thought evidence, or gathering of trade offs to help decision making.

sideeffffect 5y ago

> scala/functional engineers are also more likely to focus their energies on monads and type theory rather than product delivery This feels to me like a low effort and vague criticism. Essentially, this is a complaint about an arbitrary group of developers that they're playing around with tech (whatever that tech might be) instead of delivering... Obviously, in this case you can't say that specific thing about Python/JS/PHP/whatever developers, because "monads and type theory" just don't apply in these languages. (I know Python has MyPy, but let's put that aside for the simplicity of the argument.) But for some non-scala/functional engineers, somebody could complain that they're wasting time playing with GUI frameworks, testing frameworks, async libraries, whatever... The truth is, people can clown around with any technology, just as people can deliver with Scala/FP or something else.