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This is a tour de force, and it accomplishes the goal of enabling FP using the Go syntax and toolchain. But code written using this library is no longer Go: mo

This is a tour de force, and it accomplishes the goal of enabling FP using the Go syntax and toolchain. But code written using this library is no longer Go: most Go programmers can't grok it, and it's awkward to call normal Go libraries because there's no way to know if that function you're calling is pure. If your goal is to "make it easy and fun to write maintainable and testable code in golang" by making pure functions first-class, is there another way to do that without inventing a new language? From experience and inspired by Carmack's classic essay on FP in C++[1], I tend toward a functional style: minimize state, treat locals as const, avoid non-const globals, enable parallelism by isolating state. Go makes it easy to write static analysis tools, so go vet could be augmented to, for example, keep track of which functions are pure, and show some yellow underlines at those places where input parameters are mutated. I'd use something like that. [1] http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on/ http://sevangelatos.com/john-carmack-on/

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
It's syntactically Go but it adds a functional DSL on top of it - that is, you can't just know Go, you need to learn the ins and outs of this library too (plus functional programming) before you can use it. I cannot recommend this unless you really have to for whatever reason. Besides readability, another factor to consider is performance; Go is not optimized for functional programming structures. It doesn't have things like tail call optimization. There's better languages than Go if you want to / have to do functional programming.
- stouset 3y ago
  > you can't just know Go, you need to learn the ins and outs of this library too… before you can use it. That is… literally just how libraries are. You need to understand the underlying language and the semantics and details of the library API.
goeiedaggoeie 3y ago
Feels like the spirit of Scala reborn.
cle 3y ago
I believe these things are mostly productivity sinks, which is why I am such a Go fan and also so sad to see these types of projects in Go. This is exactly what I was afraid of when generics were introduced, and now I get to spend time arguing with people who read some blog post about how functional programming and type theory will save the world, instead of actually being productive. Ugh.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  I tend to agree. I’ve done a lot of JS and Python where I end up spending time doing functional tricks basically just because I’m bored and it makes things interesting. With Go when I’m bored I start profiling and making a zero alloc version of a function that only runs once a week.
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    FP totally works in Python...until you realize how slow function calls in Python are.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Do we have to do the "I don't really get it so nobody else should have it" kind of thing. I have a reasonable level of experience with FP and a lot of general experience (I'm not someone who "read a blog post", I've used it commercially) and I find that it's very handy at the right time. So it can be abused like anything else. So people can write over-complex stuff, true, so blame the language because it's easier than addressing the root problem which is people (it's always people isn't it). In a good language (Scala) it really makes a difference. Please dial back your casual critiques. > This is exactly what I was afraid of when generics were introduced Good god. IDK, perhaps hardware would better suit your skill set? It certainly scares me off, but you might have a good mind for it.
  - monksy 3y ago
    I think you should realize is theres a mindset in go. They're highly opinionated about how you structure code, how you format your code (capitalization on all functions as a means to express public/private, tabs, etc), and how they want it to look. It's also designed to be basically a toy language to "make programming easier". They don't want language improvements like this for the most part. The creator made it because: "The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt. – Rob Pike 1"
yoyohello13 3y ago
This is basically lodash all over again. Now I need to know two languages to read your code.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

It's syntactically Go but it adds a functional DSL on top of it - that is, you can't just know Go, you need to learn the ins and outs of this library too (plus functional programming) before you can use it. I cannot recommend this unless you really have to for whatever reason. Besides readability, another factor to consider is performance; Go is not optimized for functional programming structures. It doesn't have things like tail call optimization. There's better languages than Go if you want to / have to do functional programming.

stouset 3y ago
> you can't just know Go, you need to learn the ins and outs of this library too… before you can use it. That is… literally just how libraries are. You need to understand the underlying language and the semantics and details of the library API.

goeiedaggoeie 3y ago

Feels like the spirit of Scala reborn.

cle 3y ago

I believe these things are mostly productivity sinks, which is why I am such a Go fan and also so sad to see these types of projects in Go. This is exactly what I was afraid of when generics were introduced, and now I get to spend time arguing with people who read some blog post about how functional programming and type theory will save the world, instead of actually being productive. Ugh.

earthboundkid 3y ago
I tend to agree. I’ve done a lot of JS and Python where I end up spending time doing functional tricks basically just because I’m bored and it makes things interesting. With Go when I’m bored I start profiling and making a zero alloc version of a function that only runs once a week.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  FP totally works in Python...until you realize how slow function calls in Python are.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Do we have to do the "I don't really get it so nobody else should have it" kind of thing. I have a reasonable level of experience with FP and a lot of general experience (I'm not someone who "read a blog post", I've used it commercially) and I find that it's very handy at the right time. So it can be abused like anything else. So people can write over-complex stuff, true, so blame the language because it's easier than addressing the root problem which is people (it's always people isn't it). In a good language (Scala) it really makes a difference. Please dial back your casual critiques. > This is exactly what I was afraid of when generics were introduced Good god. IDK, perhaps hardware would better suit your skill set? It certainly scares me off, but you might have a good mind for it.
- monksy 3y ago
  I think you should realize is theres a mindset in go. They're highly opinionated about how you structure code, how you format your code (capitalization on all functions as a means to express public/private, tabs, etc), and how they want it to look. It's also designed to be basically a toy language to "make programming easier". They don't want language improvements like this for the most part. The creator made it because: "The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt. – Rob Pike 1"

yoyohello13 3y ago

This is basically lodash all over again. Now I need to know two languages to read your code.