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Why Isn't Functional Programming the Norm? [video]

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296 points gyre007 | 6 comments | 17 Oct 19 10:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.625s | source | bottom
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onion2k ◴[17 Oct 19 10:39 UTC] No.21280617[source]▶
JavaScript isn't a functional language itself, but you can use a functional library like lodash/fp (https://github.com/lodash/lodash/wiki/FP-Guide) on top of it to get all that lovely functional goodness in your frontend and node code. Using lodash/fp has made my frontend state management code a lot nicer, and I'm really only just starting out with it.
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Borkdude ◴[17 Oct 19 10:44 UTC] No.21280640[source]▶
The video explains how JavaScript started out as a Scheme-dialect (Lisp) but for marketing reasons they chose a more Java-like syntax and adopted Java into the name.
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1. galfarragem ◴[17 Oct 19 10:51 UTC] No.21280673[source]▶
An historical mistake that humanity is paying (and will pay) for a long time.

Scheme 'cloths' was a viable option. Lisp remains the most popular scripting language among Autocad users despite Autodesk pushing other languages (.NET and JS). So popular that Autocad clones use it also as a scripting language[1].

Edited [1] https://www.zwsoft.com/zwcad/features#Dynamic-Block

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2. daliusd ◴[17 Oct 19 10:57 UTC] No.21280708[source]▶
I was working for bigest Autocad competitor for more than 10 years and never had to touch anything similar to lisp :)
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3. ben509 ◴[17 Oct 19 11:40 UTC] No.21280945[source]▶
Was it a mistake, though? Languages have to be accessible to their audience, and Javascript caught on because of its relatively gentle learning curve.

If SchemeScript hadn't caught on, it might have been that VBScript took over the web.

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4. lisptw102019 ◴[17 Oct 19 12:01 UTC] No.21281080[source]▶
If my guess is right, that's because your company's product had their own proprietary language (MDL).

But, that was OK too, because if my guess is right, your company's product also had FAR FAR FAR better COM bindings than Autocad did for 99% of what you'd want to automate.

5. hyperpallium ◴[17 Oct 19 12:01 UTC] No.21281082[source]▶
Insufficiently C-like languages get ignored, according to: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
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6. doboyy ◴[17 Oct 19 17:57 UTC] No.21284657{3}[source]▶
Language designers and enthusiats will forever be disappointed at how many social and human factors are at play, which coincidentally, is a large part of the motivation for programming languages