5 ms·

Claiming that functional programming is inherently more complex than imperative is also dishonest. Industry developers that criticise it without understanding t

Claiming that functional programming is inherently more complex than imperative is also dishonest. Industry developers that criticise it without understanding the value and strengths of referential transparency are no better than your hypothetical academic groups. All abstractions introduce complexity in terms of indirection and the need to particularise to different instances. Imperative and functional simply happen to have a different approach to where they place complexity and what parts they simplify. Imperative makes it easy to update state, but then it forces you to keep in your mind every remote part of the program where your symbols may be modified (which is way harder than most developers recognize). Functional requires more work to keep track of state, but on the other hand it allows much better control of program composition and deep complex hierarchical data transformations. As they say, use the best tool for each job. It makes no sense to deride a key wrench for being more complex than a hammer and being worse at hitting nails.

c_crank 3y ago
Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. Functional programming that introduces or models state requires more abstraction, and then complexity. >Imperative makes it easy to update state, but then it forces you to keep in your mind every remote part of the program where your symbols may be modified (which is way harder than most developers recognize) Scoping inherently reduces the extent to which state is considered. Any imperative programmer worth their salt knows to minimize reliance on global variables - functional programming salesmen claiming a significant advantage by eliminating bugs involving them can't help but come off as more than a little condescending by belaboring this point. >As they say, use the best tool for each job. This is a big step down from "All programmers should know and implement purity by default because mutability is the next goto."
- TuringTest 3y ago
  > This is a big step down from "All programmers should know and implement purity by default because mutability is the next goto." Not something I said. I explicitly mentioned the functional core, iterative shell architecture, and explained how you need to understand functional enough to know when it's a good time to not use it. At this point your posts look like someone making fun of a complex technology they do not understand, without really approaching any valid criticism of its real shortcomings, because such criticism require a thorough understanding of the thing being criticised. > Functional programming that introduces or models state requires more abstraction, and then complexity. I'm pretty sure I've said exactly that. Good thing we agree on it. But you don't seem to realize that this fact is only true for handling state, and not for other aspects of programming. > Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. You've never tried to compose multiple asynchronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into one single user-facing unified presentation, have you? Your assertion is simply not true. Such feat is way simpler in functional reactive style, and a true nightmare in an imperative multithreaded program. That's why web frameworks are evolving to handle more and more reactive functional patterns for compositional asynchronous tasks.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    Your comparison of mutable programming to the use of goto and unhygenic macros would suggest that mutation is a similar type of dinosaur to be culled. >You've never tried to compose multiple asynchronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into one single user-facing unified presentation, have you? Your assertion is simply not true. Such feat is way simpler in functional reactive style, and a true nightmare in an imperative multithreaded program. That's why web frameworks are evolving to handle more and more reactive functional patterns for compositional asynchronous tasks. Imperative programming with state is simple. Programming asychronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into a single unified presentation is complex. Functional programming claims to have abstractions that make the latter more simple than imperative programming, which may or may not be true. The use of functional reactive style in React (I do not believe Angular relies on this) is probably driven by JavaScript having atrocious scoping rules and the general Web / DOM stack being full of hacks and badly written APIs. The hacks that are still present in React make it seem like this will just be yet another layer of cruft that is the front end, alas.
    - TuringTest 3y ago
      > Your comparison of mutable programming to the use of goto and unhygenic macros would suggest that mutation is a similar type of dinosaur to be culled. Then you missed the point, which is that using mutation a.k.a. cells a.k.a. imperative code when it's not needed is a dinosaur to be culled. But you need to understand when it's not needed to realize this. Functional reactive programming adoption is not something caused by the state of one particular stack; as it is also being adopted by game engines, big data analysis tools, development environments like web notebooks, etc. People throughout the industry are seeing the value and are simplifying their tools thanks to the paradigm. > Functional programming claims to have abstractions that make the latter more simple than imperative programming, which may or may not be true. Look, I get it, I really do. You don't see the possibilities of the functional paradigm and don't know how and where to use it effectively, so you keep criticizing the small part of it you do understand. I've been there, done that (though it was a long time ago). With that attitude you can stay comfortably in a corner and be impervious to the changes the industry is undergoing, and miss out on a really cool programming style out of prejudice. Or you can accept the intellectual challenge (which it certainly is, especially for someone who has spent his entire career with a single style), and know concepts that those who learn them agree that they improve their programming even if they do not adopt them 100% for their work. It's up to you. I don't gain anything with this, so I will not try to convince you of it.
- epgui 3y ago
  > Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. No it's not, objectively speaking. You're confusing simplicity with familiarity.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    Changing a variable is simple. Creating multiple layers of indirection to change a variable in a pure fashion is not as simple. That should be obvious and apparent.
    - TuringTest 3y ago
      It only appears simple because the layers of complexity to achieve that effect are hidden under the language runtime, and you're exposed to just the top of the iceberg. If you had to build the whole runtime yourself from first principles, functional behaviour would be way simpler to define.
      - c_crank 3y ago
        A functional runtime from top to bottom is simple on a FPGA. It's also pretty useless. A circuit with no memory that does the same thing each time. Pretty good for a light switch, but not the kind of things people want computers for.

c_crank 3y ago

Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. Functional programming that introduces or models state requires more abstraction, and then complexity. >Imperative makes it easy to update state, but then it forces you to keep in your mind every remote part of the program where your symbols may be modified (which is way harder than most developers recognize) Scoping inherently reduces the extent to which state is considered. Any imperative programmer worth their salt knows to minimize reliance on global variables - functional programming salesmen claiming a significant advantage by eliminating bugs involving them can't help but come off as more than a little condescending by belaboring this point. >As they say, use the best tool for each job. This is a big step down from "All programmers should know and implement purity by default because mutability is the next goto."

TuringTest 3y ago
> This is a big step down from "All programmers should know and implement purity by default because mutability is the next goto." Not something I said. I explicitly mentioned the functional core, iterative shell architecture, and explained how you need to understand functional enough to know when it's a good time to not use it. At this point your posts look like someone making fun of a complex technology they do not understand, without really approaching any valid criticism of its real shortcomings, because such criticism require a thorough understanding of the thing being criticised. > Functional programming that introduces or models state requires more abstraction, and then complexity. I'm pretty sure I've said exactly that. Good thing we agree on it. But you don't seem to realize that this fact is only true for handling state, and not for other aspects of programming. > Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. You've never tried to compose multiple asynchronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into one single user-facing unified presentation, have you? Your assertion is simply not true. Such feat is way simpler in functional reactive style, and a true nightmare in an imperative multithreaded program. That's why web frameworks are evolving to handle more and more reactive functional patterns for compositional asynchronous tasks.
- c_crank 3y ago
  Your comparison of mutable programming to the use of goto and unhygenic macros would suggest that mutation is a similar type of dinosaur to be culled. >You've never tried to compose multiple asynchronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into one single user-facing unified presentation, have you? Your assertion is simply not true. Such feat is way simpler in functional reactive style, and a true nightmare in an imperative multithreaded program. That's why web frameworks are evolving to handle more and more reactive functional patterns for compositional asynchronous tasks. Imperative programming with state is simple. Programming asychronous event streams of complex data types from different subsystems into a single unified presentation is complex. Functional programming claims to have abstractions that make the latter more simple than imperative programming, which may or may not be true. The use of functional reactive style in React (I do not believe Angular relies on this) is probably driven by JavaScript having atrocious scoping rules and the general Web / DOM stack being full of hacks and badly written APIs. The hacks that are still present in React make it seem like this will just be yet another layer of cruft that is the front end, alas.
  - TuringTest 3y ago
    > Your comparison of mutable programming to the use of goto and unhygenic macros would suggest that mutation is a similar type of dinosaur to be culled. Then you missed the point, which is that using mutation a.k.a. cells a.k.a. imperative code when it's not needed is a dinosaur to be culled. But you need to understand when it's not needed to realize this. Functional reactive programming adoption is not something caused by the state of one particular stack; as it is also being adopted by game engines, big data analysis tools, development environments like web notebooks, etc. People throughout the industry are seeing the value and are simplifying their tools thanks to the paradigm. > Functional programming claims to have abstractions that make the latter more simple than imperative programming, which may or may not be true. Look, I get it, I really do. You don't see the possibilities of the functional paradigm and don't know how and where to use it effectively, so you keep criticizing the small part of it you do understand. I've been there, done that (though it was a long time ago). With that attitude you can stay comfortably in a corner and be impervious to the changes the industry is undergoing, and miss out on a really cool programming style out of prejudice. Or you can accept the intellectual challenge (which it certainly is, especially for someone who has spent his entire career with a single style), and know concepts that those who learn them agree that they improve their programming even if they do not adopt them 100% for their work. It's up to you. I don't gain anything with this, so I will not try to convince you of it.
epgui 3y ago
> Imperative programming with state is as simple as functional programming without state. No it's not, objectively speaking. You're confusing simplicity with familiarity.
- c_crank 3y ago
  Changing a variable is simple. Creating multiple layers of indirection to change a variable in a pure fashion is not as simple. That should be obvious and apparent.
  - TuringTest 3y ago
    It only appears simple because the layers of complexity to achieve that effect are hidden under the language runtime, and you're exposed to just the top of the iceberg. If you had to build the whole runtime yourself from first principles, functional behaviour would be way simpler to define.
    - c_crank 3y ago
      A functional runtime from top to bottom is simple on a FPGA. It's also pretty useless. A circuit with no memory that does the same thing each time. Pretty good for a light switch, but not the kind of things people want computers for.