John Carmack on mutable variables

> Making almost every variable const at initialization is good practice. I wish it was the default, and mutable was a keyword.

It's funny how functional programming is slowly becoming the best practice for modern code (pure functions, no side-effects), yet functional programming languages are still considered fringe tech for some reason.

If you want a language where const is the default and mutable is a keyword, try F# for starters. I switched and never looked back.

Functional programming languages (almost always?) come with the baggage of foreign looking syntax. Additionally, imperative is easier in some situations, so having that escape hatch is great.

I think that's why we're seeing a lot of what you're describing. E.g. with Rust you end up writing mostly functional code with a bit of imperative mixed in.

Additional, most software is not pure (human input, disk, network, etc), so a pure first approach ends up being weird for many people.

At least based on my experience.

Exactly this! I’d love a modern C++ like syntax with the expressiveness of python and a mostly functional approach.

C# is not that far I suppose from what I want

Everybody's mileage will vary, but I find contemporary C# to be an impressively well rounded language and ecosystem. It's wonderfully boring, in the most positive sense of the word.

I can't stand modern C#. They've bung in a bunch of new keywords and features that are of dubious benefit every release.

I'm interested what are those new keywords and features that are of dubious benefit?

There is a huge amount of syntactic sugar that has been added over the years that doesn't do whole lot IMO. It is often imported from other languages (usually JavaScript and/or Python).

e.g. Just a very simple example to illustrate the point

    if (customer != null)
    {
        customer.Order = GetCurrentOrder();
    }

vs

    if (customer is not null)
    {
        customer.Order = GetCurrentOrder();
    }

Is there really any benefit in adding "is/is not"? I would argue no. So I categorise that as being of "dubious benefit" and there are many similar small features, keywords etc. that get added each release where they might save a few lines of code somewhere but I've never seem them used that often.