5 ms·

I suspect that OOP had a similar problem at one time.

cobrausn 15y ago
I'm not so sure. OOP entered the scene and became a dominant paradigm in a short amount of time - this doesn't happen without massive amounts of evangelization (from existing users) and marketing, neither of which can be particularly smug if they intend on being successful.
- jleader 15y ago
  I don't agree that "OOP entered the scene and became dominant in a short amount of time", though I guess it depends how you define "entered the scene" (Simula 67? Smalltalk 80? C++ in the mid 80s? Java in the mid 90s?) and "dominant" (presumably the rise of Java as a mainstream language in the late 90s?). Maybe if by OOP you just meant Java? Note that in the early days of OOP (pre-Java, say the first few years of OOPSLA in the mid to late 80s) there was a lot of overlap between the FP and OOP communities, both because CLOS was one of the pioneers exploring some of far corners of OOP, and because aficionados of weird languages tend to flock together.
- bunderbunder 15y ago
  Well, OOP had some help in the form of C++. It was easy to sneak in because it didn't strictly require people who were used to C to change their habits. Folks could, in effect, switch compilers first and then learn the language at their leisure. Of course, you could also make the argument (and I would) that C++ wasn't really an object-oriented language so much as a structured language with classes thrown in. Most of the popular functional languages, on the other hand, require folks to do a whole lot of mental gearshifting before they can be productive in the new language. That's a natural impediment to adoption. I suspect, though, that functional programming has finally found its C++, in the form of more recent versions of C#. Like with C++, it doesn't require users to immediately switch programming styles to be able to get the job done. Also like C++, though, you really can't use the language to its full capacity without getting very comfortable with a lot of functional programming concepts. Pretty much all of the neat new stuff in the .NET 4 class libraries, for example, is built around higher-order programming. Most of it will also be useless (or at least severely crippled) for someone who can't get past relying on mutable state.
- jgon 15y ago
  OOP was able to become dominant because it came with some clearly defined "killer apps", the likes of which I have yet to see materialize from the FP world. I mean, Smalltalk shows up in Byte and says "look, here is an entire system for graphically interacting with a computer, creating music, simulations, animations, drawing programs, documents, and more. It is so easy that school children can use it. We have managed to accomplish all of this in a few hundred thousand lines of our language called Smalltalk, which incidentally also contains the implementation of all the dev tools and the standard library. How large would this be in the language you are currently using (probably COBOL, Pascal, C or something similar)?" I get that FP has some very good characteristics, and I have tried to add a bit more "functional-ity" to my code over the years, but at the same time I get an overwhelming urge to say "put up or shut up" every time I am confronted with an article talking about how terrible OO and the programmers who work in it are, and how those working in FP are in some sort of enlightened programming utopia. Convince me by showing me some examples of programs so good that I can't possibly ignore them, the way OOP did. Convince me by becoming the foundation of almost every program I am currently running on my computer right now, the way OOP did. Don't convince me by writing article after article showing how insanely elegant your implementation of a mathematical function (My head will literally explode if I see another Fibonacci example) is, and how brain damaged what I am currently using must be. Numerical code comprises probably 0.1% of any computer system I am currently using. Show me instead how easy you just made to it interact with my computer, to write the type of programs that I am currently using and, for bonus points, to write the types of programs that I didn't even think were possible.
  - KingMob 15y ago
    Hmmm. The killer app, when it comes, will probably be for parallelism. Since FP languages are better able to control state, they can neatly sidestep many of the contention issues that plague imperative programming in multi-core scenarios. Problems that require heroic programming in imperative realms become much simpler in certain FP languages. And given that clock speed is settling down while core numbers are ramping up, I think this alone will make FP more compelling. It's more about appropriateness, though, than anything else. I still think OOP is great for things like GUIs, modeling complex domains. As always, the trick is to pick either the right language for your problem, or pick a multi-paradigm language, and choose the right approach for your problem.
sp332 15y ago
OOP's problem wasn't so much smugness as a messiah complex, or maybe cargo-cult application of OOP when it really wasn't a good fit for the problem.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  I suspect FP will have more resistance to cargo-cult application. I suspect far fewer people who have a partial understanding of FP will be able to hold a job doing FP than was the case for OOP. Heck, I know of one programmer who not only held an OOP programming job, but got to write a major subsystem -- with all long deeply nested class-side methods with 4 to 5 temp variables acting as merge-sort style incrementing indexes and not a single instance method or instance variable in sight. Last I heard, she was promoted and has great job security.

I'm not so sure. OOP entered the scene and became a dominant paradigm in a short amount of time - this doesn't happen without massive amounts of evangelization (from existing users) and marketing, neither of which can be particularly smug if they intend on being successful.

jleader 15y ago
I don't agree that "OOP entered the scene and became dominant in a short amount of time", though I guess it depends how you define "entered the scene" (Simula 67? Smalltalk 80? C++ in the mid 80s? Java in the mid 90s?) and "dominant" (presumably the rise of Java as a mainstream language in the late 90s?). Maybe if by OOP you just meant Java? Note that in the early days of OOP (pre-Java, say the first few years of OOPSLA in the mid to late 80s) there was a lot of overlap between the FP and OOP communities, both because CLOS was one of the pioneers exploring some of far corners of OOP, and because aficionados of weird languages tend to flock together.
bunderbunder 15y ago
Well, OOP had some help in the form of C++. It was easy to sneak in because it didn't strictly require people who were used to C to change their habits. Folks could, in effect, switch compilers first and then learn the language at their leisure. Of course, you could also make the argument (and I would) that C++ wasn't really an object-oriented language so much as a structured language with classes thrown in. Most of the popular functional languages, on the other hand, require folks to do a whole lot of mental gearshifting before they can be productive in the new language. That's a natural impediment to adoption. I suspect, though, that functional programming has finally found its C++, in the form of more recent versions of C#. Like with C++, it doesn't require users to immediately switch programming styles to be able to get the job done. Also like C++, though, you really can't use the language to its full capacity without getting very comfortable with a lot of functional programming concepts. Pretty much all of the neat new stuff in the .NET 4 class libraries, for example, is built around higher-order programming. Most of it will also be useless (or at least severely crippled) for someone who can't get past relying on mutable state.
jgon 15y ago
OOP was able to become dominant because it came with some clearly defined "killer apps", the likes of which I have yet to see materialize from the FP world. I mean, Smalltalk shows up in Byte and says "look, here is an entire system for graphically interacting with a computer, creating music, simulations, animations, drawing programs, documents, and more. It is so easy that school children can use it. We have managed to accomplish all of this in a few hundred thousand lines of our language called Smalltalk, which incidentally also contains the implementation of all the dev tools and the standard library. How large would this be in the language you are currently using (probably COBOL, Pascal, C or something similar)?" I get that FP has some very good characteristics, and I have tried to add a bit more "functional-ity" to my code over the years, but at the same time I get an overwhelming urge to say "put up or shut up" every time I am confronted with an article talking about how terrible OO and the programmers who work in it are, and how those working in FP are in some sort of enlightened programming utopia. Convince me by showing me some examples of programs so good that I can't possibly ignore them, the way OOP did. Convince me by becoming the foundation of almost every program I am currently running on my computer right now, the way OOP did. Don't convince me by writing article after article showing how insanely elegant your implementation of a mathematical function (My head will literally explode if I see another Fibonacci example) is, and how brain damaged what I am currently using must be. Numerical code comprises probably 0.1% of any computer system I am currently using. Show me instead how easy you just made to it interact with my computer, to write the type of programs that I am currently using and, for bonus points, to write the types of programs that I didn't even think were possible.
- KingMob 15y ago
  Hmmm. The killer app, when it comes, will probably be for parallelism. Since FP languages are better able to control state, they can neatly sidestep many of the contention issues that plague imperative programming in multi-core scenarios. Problems that require heroic programming in imperative realms become much simpler in certain FP languages. And given that clock speed is settling down while core numbers are ramping up, I think this alone will make FP more compelling. It's more about appropriateness, though, than anything else. I still think OOP is great for things like GUIs, modeling complex domains. As always, the trick is to pick either the right language for your problem, or pick a multi-paradigm language, and choose the right approach for your problem.

sp332 15y ago

OOP's problem wasn't so much smugness as a messiah complex, or maybe cargo-cult application of OOP when it really wasn't a good fit for the problem.

stcredzero 15y ago
I suspect FP will have more resistance to cargo-cult application. I suspect far fewer people who have a partial understanding of FP will be able to hold a job doing FP than was the case for OOP. Heck, I know of one programmer who not only held an OOP programming job, but got to write a major subsystem -- with all long deeply nested class-side methods with 4 to 5 temp variables acting as merge-sort style incrementing indexes and not a single instance method or instance variable in sight. Last I heard, she was promoted and has great job security.