24 ms·

I have a feeling the term "functional programming" will be a negative term by the end of the decade. Not "functional aapproaches", just "functional programming

I have a feeling the term "functional programming" will be a negative term by the end of the decade. Not "functional aapproaches", just "functional programming". In the same way that now "Object-oriented programming" is a negative term (but OO techniques in isolation where appropriate by context are totally fine).

jacquesm 4y ago
> I have a feeling the term "functional programming" will be a negative term by the end of the decade. And what do you base this feeling on? Functional programming has been on a very slow and steady rise since... the 1950s. In fact the site that you are writing this on is written in a functional programming language.
- baby 4y ago
  slow and steady doesn't win the race :p I think FP would have to get big before getting any bad rap, and I don't think it will
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    FP has a lot going for it and it is gaining traction bit by bit in all kinds of domains where previously this was not the case. I'm not sure if we should lump Erlang/Elixir in with functional programming (I think they should be but others may disagree because of the Prolog ancestry), but Clojure is definitely there as is Haskell, F# and so on. Reliability in software is rapidly becoming a key item, as more and more real world processes are directly influenced by software accidents have the potential to have very bad consequences, and functional programming is very good at completely avoiding certain classes of bugs. Couple that with mature eco systems and success stories such as WhatsApp and I think we are getting closer to seeing FP become mainstream. What really would move the needle is if software engineering were to be held to the same standard as regular engineering: liability. Sooner or later this industry will have to grow up and all the band-aids in the world won't help to achieve that if it isn't addressed at the foundation.
    - kephasp 4y ago
      Most so-called software engineers fail to do something crucial in engineering: they have zero knowledge about the scientific state of the art about programming. I agree that the absence of liability enables this.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That is interesting: yes, it is true. That's why you see these endless (poor) re-inventions of the wheel. If the state of the art would at least be commonly known and well communicated we could avoid some of that. Not all of it because another mantra is that re-inventing something (poorly) is a useful exercise. I agree with that on principle if you then end up using the blessed version in your actual work but more often than not it is the homebrew and rickety version that the whole house of cards will then end up depending on.
        kephasp 4y ago
        Experimenting around the state of the art or reimplementing the state of the art ourselves while being informed by it would be fine. I guess it would be a great exercise, as you said.
    - baby 4y ago
      To me it looks like FP has managed to do its biggest contribution so far: Rust
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That's an interesting take on Rust, can you expand a bit on why you think it looks that way?

jacquesm 4y ago

> I have a feeling the term "functional programming" will be a negative term by the end of the decade. And what do you base this feeling on? Functional programming has been on a very slow and steady rise since... the 1950s. In fact the site that you are writing this on is written in a functional programming language.

baby 4y ago
slow and steady doesn't win the race :p I think FP would have to get big before getting any bad rap, and I don't think it will
- jacquesm 4y ago
  FP has a lot going for it and it is gaining traction bit by bit in all kinds of domains where previously this was not the case. I'm not sure if we should lump Erlang/Elixir in with functional programming (I think they should be but others may disagree because of the Prolog ancestry), but Clojure is definitely there as is Haskell, F# and so on. Reliability in software is rapidly becoming a key item, as more and more real world processes are directly influenced by software accidents have the potential to have very bad consequences, and functional programming is very good at completely avoiding certain classes of bugs. Couple that with mature eco systems and success stories such as WhatsApp and I think we are getting closer to seeing FP become mainstream. What really would move the needle is if software engineering were to be held to the same standard as regular engineering: liability. Sooner or later this industry will have to grow up and all the band-aids in the world won't help to achieve that if it isn't addressed at the foundation.
  - kephasp 4y ago
    Most so-called software engineers fail to do something crucial in engineering: they have zero knowledge about the scientific state of the art about programming. I agree that the absence of liability enables this.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That is interesting: yes, it is true. That's why you see these endless (poor) re-inventions of the wheel. If the state of the art would at least be commonly known and well communicated we could avoid some of that. Not all of it because another mantra is that re-inventing something (poorly) is a useful exercise. I agree with that on principle if you then end up using the blessed version in your actual work but more often than not it is the homebrew and rickety version that the whole house of cards will then end up depending on.
      - kephasp 4y ago
        Experimenting around the state of the art or reimplementing the state of the art ourselves while being informed by it would be fine. I guess it would be a great exercise, as you said.
  - baby 4y ago
    To me it looks like FP has managed to do its biggest contribution so far: Rust
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That's an interesting take on Rust, can you expand a bit on why you think it looks that way?