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Javascript has Object.freeze and Object.seal built right in! How is that not emphasis? (He asks with a touch of both sarcasm and seriousness.) (I seriously bel

by tel 11y ago

Javascript has Object.freeze and Object.seal built right in! How is that not emphasis? (He asks with a touch of both sarcasm and seriousness.) (I seriously believe that any attempt to define FP will end in tears. It's a marketing term and has no real likelihood of producing legitimate technical value.)

DanWaterworth 11y ago
Well, some people write very functional javascript. I've thought of a better definition that circumvents the issue of what constitutes emphasis. Functional languages are languages used predominantly by functional programmers. Being functional probably has more to do with how a language is used than the set of features it boasts.
- tel 11y ago
  That is precisely my favorite definition :)
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  I don't quite agree. Languages push you in different directions. Haskell pushes you toward FP; you can fight the language and "do" (pun intended) imperative programming, but it's going to be painful. Can you do FP in any language? Maybe not COBOL, but you could do it in C with function pointers. But it's still easier to do it in Haskell than in C, and it's still easier to do imperative programming in C than in Haskell. So you have a point. But languages have different characteristics, too, and those differences let us classify languages, if not as "FP" and "non-FP", at least as "more FP" and "less FP".
  - DanWaterworth 11y ago
    I'm not saying that every language is the same. I'm saying it's very difficult to define styles of programming, but if you have a particular style (in this case functional), you will gravitate towards languages that facilitate that style. At the boundary, where a language doesn't have a particular leaning, the style that you will adhere to is going to be influenced much more by the community around the language than its features.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I seriously believe that any attempt to define FP will end in tears. FP as a programming style to which a programmer may adhere to a greater or less degree is easy to define. FP as a binary is-or-is-not characteristic of programming languages is, well, a misguided concept. To the extent it makes sense to talk about FP -- or OOP, or any other style -- as a feature of a programming language, it is more in terms of the degree to, or better the particular manner in, which it facilitates that style of programming, rather than a binary descriptor.
- tel 11y ago
  I agree, but then I also add to that the roughly four major definitions of what that means today and the various misinterpretations therein and call it a wash. It's a series of cultures all bandied about within a larger cultural phenomenon and you can take or leave whatever pieces of it you like.

by tel 11y ago

DanWaterworth 11y ago

Well, some people write very functional javascript. I've thought of a better definition that circumvents the issue of what constitutes emphasis. Functional languages are languages used predominantly by functional programmers. Being functional probably has more to do with how a language is used than the set of features it boasts.

tel 11y ago
That is precisely my favorite definition :)
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I don't quite agree. Languages push you in different directions. Haskell pushes you toward FP; you can fight the language and "do" (pun intended) imperative programming, but it's going to be painful. Can you do FP in any language? Maybe not COBOL, but you could do it in C with function pointers. But it's still easier to do it in Haskell than in C, and it's still easier to do imperative programming in C than in Haskell. So you have a point. But languages have different characteristics, too, and those differences let us classify languages, if not as "FP" and "non-FP", at least as "more FP" and "less FP".
- DanWaterworth 11y ago
  I'm not saying that every language is the same. I'm saying it's very difficult to define styles of programming, but if you have a particular style (in this case functional), you will gravitate towards languages that facilitate that style. At the boundary, where a language doesn't have a particular leaning, the style that you will adhere to is going to be influenced much more by the community around the language than its features.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> I seriously believe that any attempt to define FP will end in tears. FP as a programming style to which a programmer may adhere to a greater or less degree is easy to define. FP as a binary is-or-is-not characteristic of programming languages is, well, a misguided concept. To the extent it makes sense to talk about FP -- or OOP, or any other style -- as a feature of a programming language, it is more in terms of the degree to, or better the particular manner in, which it facilitates that style of programming, rather than a binary descriptor.

tel 11y ago
I agree, but then I also add to that the roughly four major definitions of what that means today and the various misinterpretations therein and call it a wash. It's a series of cultures all bandied about within a larger cultural phenomenon and you can take or leave whatever pieces of it you like.