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296 points gyre007 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.233s | source
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_han ◴[] No.21281004[source]
The top comment on YouTube raises a valid point:

> I've programmed both functional and non-functional (not necessarily OO) programming languages for ~2 decades now. This misses the point. Even if functional programming helps you reason about ADTs and data flow, monads, etc, it has the opposite effect for helping you reason about what the machine is doing. You have no control over execution, memory layout, garbage collection, you name it. FP will always occupy a niche because of where it sits in the abstraction hierarchy. I'm a real time graphics programmer and if I can't mentally map (in rough terms, specific if necessary) what assembly my code is going to generate, the language is a non-starter. This is true for any company at scale. FP can be used at the fringe or the edge, but the core part demands efficiency.

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1. skohan ◴[] No.21283461[source]
> This is true for any company at scale. FP can be used at the fringe or the edge, but the core part demands efficiency.

I think things like real-time graphics are the exception not the rule. Most of the software run by users these days is in the context of a browser, which is implemented many layers of abstraction away from the machine. Much of the code running servers is also still interpreted scripting languages.

Don't get me wrong, I wish a lot more software was implemented with performance in mind, because the average-case user experience for software could be so much better, but a ton of the software we use today could be replaced by FP and perform just as well or better.