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This is how people often describe Erlang and Elixir. But I guess it's fair to say that functional programming is not "programming as you usually would" for most

This is how people often describe Erlang and Elixir. But I guess it's fair to say that functional programming is not "programming as you usually would" for most!

anonzzzies 3y ago
Well, with Erlang you really have to plan these things and implement those. Functionality (pure/immutable more-so) helps, but it doesn't pick up everything as in, it's not drop-in; it's very possible, but you have to change habits, even if you were a functional programmer before.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Rust isn't exactly the normal style either unless you were used to some subset of modern c++ that probably only gets used in gaming or embedded. While I wouldn't normally argue for rigor or anything tedious, creating computationally expensive abstraction layers to let you develop capabilities faster without having to worry about defects or edge cases seems the opposite of what rust is designed for. I think the language will fight you the whole way. The only aid I can think of is that you can wildly unwrap stuff everywhere not worrying about panics. Which does save some time.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    > Rust isn't exactly the normal style either unless you were used to some subset of modern c++ that probably only gets used in gaming or embedded. But, as I understand it, it works with 'normal Rust', which, if you enjoy Rust, would be normal right? It seems to compile the rust to wasm, run it in wasm, log the results while keeping pace of how far it came, and then rerun it with previous results. That's not quite nice to have, but, like you say I think, it has foot guns, and, one of the worst, is getting too comfortable thinking it has your back while this is not enough; side effects behind immutable variables are there and while this helps you a bit, it doesn't fix any of that and maybe makes it worse. I am just a little annoyed this is not the norm but rather something special (and closed source?), why is it not everywhere? Probably because high amounts of magic?
jerf 3y ago
"This is how people often describe Erlang and Elixir." It is. I recall it fooling me when I first got into Erlang. But it's wrong. Erlang has some tools that help lead you in a more robust direction, but you still have to work to use them. They are not automatic and it's trivial to write an Erlang service that has a single point of failure, even accidentally. Now, I don't want to criticize the tools it has and the fact that it does rather strongly lead you in a robust direction more than many systems. This is somewhere between "an easy mistake to make for a newbie" and "some sloppy advocacy sometimes by some people", 100% a people thing, not a criticism of the code base or technicals at all. But it is important for people considering Erlang/Elixir or early in the process to understand that it does not simply automatically make all your code run robustly in a cluster. It is only a strong push in the right direction and you still must understand it enough to make sure you don't break it.

This is how people often describe Erlang and Elixir. But I guess it's fair to say that functional programming is not "programming as you usually would" for most!

anonzzzies 3y ago

Well, with Erlang you really have to plan these things and implement those. Functionality (pure/immutable more-so) helps, but it doesn't pick up everything as in, it's not drop-in; it's very possible, but you have to change habits, even if you were a functional programmer before.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Rust isn't exactly the normal style either unless you were used to some subset of modern c++ that probably only gets used in gaming or embedded. While I wouldn't normally argue for rigor or anything tedious, creating computationally expensive abstraction layers to let you develop capabilities faster without having to worry about defects or edge cases seems the opposite of what rust is designed for. I think the language will fight you the whole way. The only aid I can think of is that you can wildly unwrap stuff everywhere not worrying about panics. Which does save some time.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  > Rust isn't exactly the normal style either unless you were used to some subset of modern c++ that probably only gets used in gaming or embedded. But, as I understand it, it works with 'normal Rust', which, if you enjoy Rust, would be normal right? It seems to compile the rust to wasm, run it in wasm, log the results while keeping pace of how far it came, and then rerun it with previous results. That's not quite nice to have, but, like you say I think, it has foot guns, and, one of the worst, is getting too comfortable thinking it has your back while this is not enough; side effects behind immutable variables are there and while this helps you a bit, it doesn't fix any of that and maybe makes it worse. I am just a little annoyed this is not the norm but rather something special (and closed source?), why is it not everywhere? Probably because high amounts of magic?

jerf 3y ago

"This is how people often describe Erlang and Elixir." It is. I recall it fooling me when I first got into Erlang. But it's wrong. Erlang has some tools that help lead you in a more robust direction, but you still have to work to use them. They are not automatic and it's trivial to write an Erlang service that has a single point of failure, even accidentally. Now, I don't want to criticize the tools it has and the fact that it does rather strongly lead you in a robust direction more than many systems. This is somewhere between "an easy mistake to make for a newbie" and "some sloppy advocacy sometimes by some people", 100% a people thing, not a criticism of the code base or technicals at all. But it is important for people considering Erlang/Elixir or early in the process to understand that it does not simply automatically make all your code run robustly in a cluster. It is only a strong push in the right direction and you still must understand it enough to make sure you don't break it.