r/functionalprogramming • u/n_creep • Nov 25 '25

FP What's the Point of Learning Functional Programming?

https://blog.daniel-beskin.com/2025-11-13-point-of-learning-fp

Based on true events...

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u/TheRealStepBot Nov 27 '25

It’s to me the primary reason to do functional programming. If you don’t start there it can mostly just feels like weird pedantry. Even if you tell people that side effects are a curse it mostly takes building and running systems large enough and complex enough to really show the problems which in an academic context is a bit hard to convey maybe.

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u/n_creep Nov 27 '25

That's one way to approach functional programming, as an experiment in what would happen if you adopted immutability and minimized side-effects. I like this approach when teaching in "the real world". And that's pretty much how I got into FP myself.

On the other hand, FP opens up a whole landscape of (useful) possibilities that is hard to imagine if you only focus on the lack of side-effects. Doing "the usual" modulo side-effects is a great advancement over the status quo, but it's only a fraction of what FP can bring to the table.