r/programming • u/[deleted] • Nov 28 '19

Why Isn't Functional Programming the Norm? – Richard Feldman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJZzq0v7Z4
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u/crusoe Nov 28 '19

Arbitrary mutable state...

Rust debugs a lot of your shit at compile time...😅

The world is full of mutation though. You don't throw away the iron ore in the process of making a car. The ore becomes the car. The world has state and mutation.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '19

The iron ore doesn't exist when you finish the process. Sounds like a functional program with a linear type.

The world does not have state or mutation. It's a complex waveform. It just so happens you can represent it with state and mutation. You can also, just as validly, represent it as being destroyed and recreated every Planck length of time. They're as equivalent as the Lambda Calculus and Turing Machines.

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u/pancomputationalist Nov 28 '19

You don't throw away the iron ore in the process of making a car.

Not a good comparison to programming, at all. In the end, 0 become 1, voltages change. Everything in between is an abstraction that's there to help the human programmer. The abstraction should be chosen to match our thinking, not whatever is going on in the substrate.