Re:Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters
by MichaelGG on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @01:47PM
(#2276646)
Not really. Take the pure functional example - you've got power because the compiler can transform certain parts of code. Now, throw in all sorts of unsafe mutable operations to the language. The language can still transform the pure parts, so you've lost no power. But you've gained the power to write other types of code as well. It's not as if you have to use every language feature all the time and suffer the downsides everywhere.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters
by JulianMorrison on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @07:31AM
(#2279321)
This still depends on the design of the language, though. Consider Java. There is definitely a pure functional subset of the language. However, any time you call across an object boundary the compiler has no way to know that the call can be treated as functional - because the language has late binding, and the actual implementation is swappable. In practise the JIT learns stuff like this and transforms it at runtime. That extra effort is needed because the language can't guarantee functional purity.
The point here being that some design decisions that add functionality remove the ability to rely upon design assumptions.