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

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296 points gyre007 | 1 comments | 17 Oct 19 10:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.271s | source
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flowerlad ◴[17 Oct 19 16:32 UTC] No.21283724[source]▶
Functional programming is not new, it has been around for many decades. The reason it didn't catch on is because it doesn't map very well to how our brain works. Human brains are object oriented, so OOP is very easy to grasp.

The real question is, why are people now taking a second look at functional programming. And the answer is Moore's law. Moore's law is coming to and end, and CPUs are not getting faster. Instead they are adding more and more cores. To take advantage of lots of cores you need concurrency. OOP is not very concurrency-friendly because objects have state, and to avoid corrupting state in a multi-threaded environment you need locks, and locks reduce concurrency. Functional programming doesn't have state, so you don't need locks, so you can get better concurrency.

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cuddlecake ◴[17 Oct 19 16:36 UTC] No.21283758[source]▶
> Human brains are object oriented, so OOP is very easy to grasp.

Can I cite you on this? Because I have only ever seen this explained in Programming 101, where Java is the language they teach.

I wonder where this sentiment comes from. I imagine it came from marketing.

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1. iLemming ◴[18 Oct 19 04:30 UTC] No.21288700[source]▶
> Can I cite you on this?

No, you can't. Because like the other commenter noted: "This is utter rubbish." It only looks easy to understand on the surface, but quickly becomes a mess. "spaghetti code" and "lasagna code" are the terms invented in OOP realm. Being said that - some advanced FP concepts can be pretty daunting to grasp as well.

Saying that human brains are OOP or FP oriented is equivalent to saying that human brains wired to recognize patterns in music but not color, or something like that.