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I get the impression from the article the author may have meant declarative instead of functional programming. FP can be fully imperative. I often see developer

I get the impression from the article the author may have meant declarative instead of functional programming. FP can be fully imperative. I often see developers interchange these terms improperly because there is some implicit narrow context that’s out of scope to the broader nature of the terms.

zelphirkalt 1y ago
Can you give an example for imperative yet functional? Do you mean something like within a function using lots of assignment and such, but keeping the function pure to the outside?
- austin-cheney 1y ago
  Red Language claims to be functional imperative. In my case I prefer to use functions as much as possible for structure and organization in TypeScript, because functions are portable and provide scope. The functions are mostly void functions that don’t return a value, such as event handlers. I completely detest OOP and inheritance.
- troupo 1y ago
  Erlang and Elixir. They are fictional, but don't care if you do impressive IO or any other side effect in the middle of a function.
  - troupo 1y ago
    Jut re-read my reply. iOS keyboard is just so hilariously bad. "they are fictional", "impressive IO". Here's the corrected version: Erlang and Elixir. They are functional, but don't care if you do IO or any other side effect in the middle of a function.
    - zelphirkalt 1y ago
      To be honest, I don't think that this strictly meets the criteria of FP, but there is nothing wrong with that. I myself often use a Scheme dialect, which also allows you to do mutation and side-effects all day long. But what I do is to put that stuff into a thin layer that is around the functional core of the code, so that the core logic is not affected by the procedural/imperative parts. It is not 100% functional (and can't be), but it is practical and reaps most of the benefits of FP, except for that very thin layer that does some input and output. I am not trying to down-talk Elixir or Erlang here. Both are great languages. That said, I wouldn't call this approach "imperative but functional". I would rather say functional core and thin imperative/procedural outer layer. Similar response to the sibling comment. And considering this, I still see functional and imperative at odds. But this is merely a difference in terminology, not in practice and how we solve problems.
      - troupo 1y ago
        > That said, I wouldn't call this approach "imperative but functional". I would rather say functional core and thin imperative/procedural outer layer. I call such languages "pragmatic programming languages" :) They don't care about theoretical pureness, they want to get stuff done. And often that stuff is thing like "stick logging into the middle of a function" or "fire off an event to an external system".

zelphirkalt 1y ago

Can you give an example for imperative yet functional? Do you mean something like within a function using lots of assignment and such, but keeping the function pure to the outside?

austin-cheney 1y ago
Red Language claims to be functional imperative. In my case I prefer to use functions as much as possible for structure and organization in TypeScript, because functions are portable and provide scope. The functions are mostly void functions that don’t return a value, such as event handlers. I completely detest OOP and inheritance.
troupo 1y ago
Erlang and Elixir. They are fictional, but don't care if you do impressive IO or any other side effect in the middle of a function.
- troupo 1y ago
  Jut re-read my reply. iOS keyboard is just so hilariously bad. "they are fictional", "impressive IO". Here's the corrected version: Erlang and Elixir. They are functional, but don't care if you do IO or any other side effect in the middle of a function.
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    To be honest, I don't think that this strictly meets the criteria of FP, but there is nothing wrong with that. I myself often use a Scheme dialect, which also allows you to do mutation and side-effects all day long. But what I do is to put that stuff into a thin layer that is around the functional core of the code, so that the core logic is not affected by the procedural/imperative parts. It is not 100% functional (and can't be), but it is practical and reaps most of the benefits of FP, except for that very thin layer that does some input and output. I am not trying to down-talk Elixir or Erlang here. Both are great languages. That said, I wouldn't call this approach "imperative but functional". I would rather say functional core and thin imperative/procedural outer layer. Similar response to the sibling comment. And considering this, I still see functional and imperative at odds. But this is merely a difference in terminology, not in practice and how we solve problems.
    - troupo 1y ago
      > That said, I wouldn't call this approach "imperative but functional". I would rather say functional core and thin imperative/procedural outer layer. I call such languages "pragmatic programming languages" :) They don't care about theoretical pureness, they want to get stuff done. And often that stuff is thing like "stick logging into the middle of a function" or "fire off an event to an external system".