It’s not just you. Functional Programming really does not adequately solve any of the problems that its advocates claim while refusing to provide any evidence.
And it’s not “biased” to write these claims off.
And yet, without any substance, the debate rages.
Nobody asked (until now, so thank you for asking!), and this is a fairly well discussed topic for anyone who cares to search!
You will probably get a lot of slightly different answers depending on who you ask or where you look, but I think a very strong common thread is "referential transparency". Functional programming gives you that, and that is the property that makes FP particularly well suited for parallel computation. Referential transparency is related to the concept of "function purity" (in the sense that either one usually guarantees the other), which you will often hear people talk about as well. The two concepts are so intimately tied that sometimes I wonder if they're two different perspectives on the same thing.
This, along with the fact that FP has been an active area of research (an important part of innovation) for a long time, is why I brought it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referential_transparency
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2938...
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> programmers can just use functions to code and end up with functional programming, it isn't an obscure style
That's not how it works. Note that functional programming has nothing to do with merely "writing functions".
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> without any substance, the debate rages
The substance is there and there is plenty of it, but learning requires work.
-Haskell is faster than C (lol)
-FP gives you free concurrency
-FP makes code more testable
-FP is easier to read
-FP is easier to consume for people
-FP results in no bugs
-FP is easier to change
-FP will literally suck your peepee
-Actually FP is the second coming for Christ
It’s really funny how you also pretend you’ve never heard of all the silver bullet claims that are incessantly plaguing every programming forum.
What’s also really funny is your multiple alt accounts manipulating your votes. You must be real secure in those those claims.
> -Actually FP is the second coming for Christ
On a style point, you've rather undermined yourself that these are common claims because there are entries on this list that are clearly fabricated, as well as others that look like wilful misinterpretations of what someone else said. That casts doubt on the more reasonable entries. There are annoying FP evangelists out there, but the overall tone pattern matches straw-manning.
You'd have made it easier for everyone taking the whole list seriously. Transparently mixing fact and fiction just makes it harder for people who aren't already part of a conversation.
> -Haskell is faster than C (lol)
If they regularly claim that you should easily be able to point to several recent examples. Can you?
They absolutely solve real issues, and it's just sticking your head into sand to say otherwise.
