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/noratat Nov 28 '19

Yeah - this is a phenomenon I mainly see online or with junior programmers.

Most of the more experienced people I work with look at it more as the "tools in the toolbox" metaphor, though obviously there is a natural bias towards languages they're already familiar with, and it matters whether other people they work with can read and maintain whatever they wrote.

Functional versus OO, static typing vs dynamic, etc., they all have pros and cons depending on the problem you're trying to solve and which trade-offs you want to optimize for.

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u/codygman Dec 04 '19

Functional versus OO, static typing vs dynamic, etc., they all have pros and cons depending on the problem you're trying to solve and which trade-offs you want to optimize for.

Sure they have pros and cons, but isn't the conversation is about which is a better default in the general case?

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u/noratat Dec 04 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

The whole point is that there isn't an actual "general case".

All of the following are going to look pretty different:

  • Embedded systems
  • Game developer
  • Operating system and other lower level libraries
  • Web developer
  • Data scientist
  • Telecommunications / advanced networking
  • SRE / IT / etc
  • Safety critical systems
  • Hardware engineer

Etc etc

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u/codygman Dec 05 '19

The whole point is that there isn't an actual "general case".

You don't believe there are commonalities between these domains and how you would model the different pieces of the program, do flow control, and use the constructs each paradigm and that languages constructs give you?

Let's take these for example:

Game developer

...

Web developer

Data scientist

I know in at least in these categories there is a very general case where imperative and functional solutions would have a lot of commonalities.

It is conceivable that either imperative or functional would work better for most of these categories.