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

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296 points gyre007 | 8 comments | 17 Oct 19 10:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.376s | source | bottom
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lewisjoe ◴[17 Oct 19 10:57 UTC] No.21280702[source]▶
Richard Gabriel’s famous essay “Worse is better” (https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html) is an interesting perspective on why Lisp lost to C. In a way, the same arguments (simplicity vs consistency vs correctness vs completeness) can be made for why functional programming lost to OOP.

But those philosophical perspectives aside, personally I find my brain works very much like a Turing Machine, when dealing with complex problems. Apart from my code, even most of my todos are simple step-by-step instructions to achieve something. It’s easily understandable why like me, other non-math folks would prefer a Turing Machine over Lambda Calculus’ way of writing instructions.

This could be why OOP/Imperative was often preferred over FP.

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slig ◴[17 Oct 19 11:05 UTC] No.21280760[source]▶
Beware: JWZ doesn't like people visiting his website from HN.
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geitir ◴[17 Oct 19 11:34 UTC] No.21280909[source]▶
The fact to he took the time to do that shows who the real man-child is
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Ygg2 ◴[17 Oct 19 11:51 UTC] No.21281020[source]▶
That, or he hates the HN hug of death.
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1. dspillett ◴[17 Oct 19 11:58 UTC] No.21281064[source]▶
Nah, just having a problem with the hug of death would be an explanation for redirecting to a polite static message saying "sorry, my site can't handle the load when HN links to it". What he has done instead is excessively diskish.
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2. wil421 ◴[17 Oct 19 12:08 UTC] No.21281127[source]▶
What has he done? Everyone’s commenting he doesn’t like HN but when I clicked the link everything looks fine. Serious question.
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3. rgoulter ◴[17 Oct 19 12:18 UTC] No.21281199[source]▶
It redirects to an image with a hairy testicle and gives a low opinion of HN readers: https://web.archive.org/web/20191014203443/https://www.jwz.o...
4. robjan ◴[17 Oct 19 12:20 UTC] No.21281208[source]▶
You must be using Brave or a browser plugin which doesn't send referral headers. If you use a normal browser, it displays a testicle in an egg cup with a silly phrase complaining about the demographic of HN users.
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5. ◴[17 Oct 19 12:20 UTC] No.21281214[source]▶
6. wil421 ◴[17 Oct 19 12:34 UTC] No.21281329{3}[source]▶
I’m using iOS safari with AdGuard. It’s probably AdGuard.
7. dorfsmay ◴[17 Oct 19 13:15 UTC] No.21281661{3}[source]▶
I open everything for which I don't need to be logged in, in an incognito window, and this page worked fine.
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8. dspillett ◴[17 Oct 19 14:38 UTC] No.21282520{4}[source]▶
An incognito window doesn't quite count as "if you use a normal browser". Unless your not using incognito is the unusual case for you, which it isn't for most users.

Given a choice between changing my browsing behaviour to see his content or just blocking it so it (the testicle redirect or the other content) will never both my vision again, I go for the latter option.