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

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.

> FP will always occupy a niche because of where it sits in the abstraction hierarchy

At some point in history, people stopped worrying about not understanding compilers, how they allocate registers and handle loops and do low-level optimizations. The compilers (and languages like C or C++) became good enough (or even better than humans in many cases) in optimizing code.

The same happened with managed memory and databases, and it will happen here, too. Compilers with FP will become good enough in translating to the machine code so that almost nobody will really care that much.

The overall historical trend of programming is more/better abstractions for humans and better automated tools to translate these abstractions into performant code.

> At some point in history, people stopped worrying

Did they ? Because I keep seeing people around me who want to get into FPGA programming because they aren't getting enough juice from their computers. Sure, if you're making $businessapp you don't care but there is a large segment of people who really really really really want things to go faster, with no limits - content creation, games, finance... hell, I'd sell a rib for a compiler that goes a few times faster :-)