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To me, "easier to hold in your head" is "easier to reason about". I can also imagine someone describing functional style (the thing Carmack says makes state pr
by bithive123 14y ago
To me, "easier to hold in your head" is "easier to reason about". I can also imagine someone describing functional style (the thing Carmack says makes state presented to your code explicit) as "more mathematical".
- kibwen 14y agoI wasn't saying that the example arguments I gave were necessarily invalid, only that they are remarkably uncompelling. Is functional style the only way to achieve concise code? Is "mathematical" code really the standard to which we ought to aspire? These questions, among others, are left unanswered. Essentially, a bad argument for functional programming says, "here is what functional programming does well; here is why that helps you". A good argument for functional programming says, "here is a very real problem that you have encountered; here is the remarkably effective way in which functional programming addresses it". Note the inversion, especially the focus on solving problems rather than on justifying paradigms.