Once you go functional, you can never go back

Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by Fiahil on Monday May 18, 2015 @09:24AM (#9564243)

As someone who worked with OCaml and C++, and now working with Scala, I must concur.

First weeks or months are hard, because you have a lot of new mechanism (and syntax) to learn. Then, when things gets easier, designing reusable components with function composition become almost systematic. In the end, you'll be able to write code that feels like poetry (it's very difficult to put words on that feeling, so I understand if it sounds like a bad piece of propaganda to you).

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by emsy on Monday May 18, 2015 @09:53AM (#9564396)

I'm interested if Scala's OOP hybridity leads to better readable code on a high level of abstraction than for example Haskell? Or do you mainly avoid the OOP features of the language?

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by Fiahil on Monday May 18, 2015 @11:23AM (#9564957)

I tend to avoid writing Scala code with lots of OOP patterns, because it really adds complexity for things you don't need to. The "Functional Way" wins every time in terms of readability and simplicity, when you are accustomed to this logic.

I would say, you can try at the beginning if it's easier for you to translate from OOP language with OOP concepts to FP, but eventually you'll end avoiding that.

If you are looking for a way to organize your code, I'll suggest to experiment with OCaml modules. I found them very clean.

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by the_af on Monday May 18, 2015 @10:03AM (#9564442)

In my own (very limited!) experience, Scala code is way harder to read than Haskell's. Even type signatures of Scala functions are harder to understand, and more verbose. Scala brings OOP to the table, but I wouldn't say this makes it a "higher level of abstraction" either. It does make it more complex, though.

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by marcosdumay on Monday May 18, 2015 @10:53AM (#9564763)

You can do OOP-like code on Haskell too... Just don't show your code for experienced Haskell developers.

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by codygman on Monday May 18, 2015 @11:36AM (#9565032)

If it's the right solution then an experienced Haskell developer will congratulate you. If it's the wrong solution they'll point you towards a functional solution which likely works better with the language/paradigm.

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by marcosdumay on Monday May 18, 2015 @10:12PM (#9567835)

That was intended as a joke, but not completely. Emulating OOP seems to be deeply frowned upon by Haskell developers.

That is, until you actually do it; I don't think I ever saw people complaining about any actual instance of OOP-like code, just about the idea.

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Re:Once you go functional, you can never go back by codygman on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @04:44AM (#9568738)

> Emulating OOP seems to be deeply frowned upon by Haskell developers.

Are you sure? I don't think many frown upon the Yi developers for it:

http://yi-editor.github.io/2014/09/05/oop/

> That is, until you actually do it; I don't think I ever saw people complaining about any actual instance of OOP-like code, just about the idea.

Sometimes there is something to complain about ;)

I remember listening to a Haskell Cast with Michael Snoyman and/or Gabriel Gonzalez of the Conduit and Pipes fame... whoever it was mentioned that their early designs were very imperative because they thought it was necessary for performance.

However over time a functional API/core emerged and was more stable and performant.

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