Functional Programming? Don’t Even Bother, It’s a Silly Toy

[albydarned]

This article is glorious:

Functional Programming? Don’t Even Bother, It’s a Silly Toy

[AstonJ]

Real-world enterprise software demands a complex set of rigorous and compulsory requirements pertaining to the expected amount of embedded abstractions within the software solution. In other words, object-oriented programming enables the programmer to utilize multiple mechanisms of abstraction that fully satisfy the complex requirements demanded by the enterprise.

[peerreynders]

That’s satire.

This isn’t:

I’ve written before about conceptual overhead, and a nice side effect of reducing the number of concepts in a system is that you increase the number of people who can understand the system. This, then, increases the number of people who can make changes to the system. Certainly, a software design that can be safely modified by a large group of people is better than one that can only be modified by fewer.¹
…
¹This is why I think hardcore functional programming is not going to ever become mainstream—it requires deeply understanding many highly abstract concepts.

https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2019/07/25/four-better-rules-for-software-design.html#conceptual-overhead-creates-confusion-and-complexity

[albydarned]

This was my favorite.

It takes at least 20–30 years to get good with OOP. Even then most people with 30 years of OOP experience haven’t truly mastered it. The learning path is rough, filled with uncertainty. A lifetime of learning awaits the OOP developer, how exciting is that?

What about the poor functional programmers? Unfortunately, there’s not much to learn. I have personally taught a few junior developers functional programming in JavaScript, and they became really good at it in about half a year. They simply had to understand a few basic concepts and then learned to apply them pretty quickly. Where’s the thrill of lifetime learning? I wouldn’t envy them.

I won’t admit how long it took me to realize the article was satire

[AstonJ]

@albydarned

I won’t admit how long it took me to realize the article was satire

The title?

@peerreynders

This is why I think hardcore functional programming is not going to ever become mainstream—it requires deeply understanding many highly abstract concepts.

I think that is a valid point. I’m eager to create my first FP app because I’m curious to see how I feel about the experience compared to an OOP app. I already have an idea of the things I might like …and things I might miss or find an inconvenience.

[Maartz]

This should also be a hint.
Nobody can really take this as a real rant… isn’t it ?

Oh gosh

It is obvious that so-called “functional” programming is flawed, it makes redundant things like refactoring and unit testing unnecessarily easy. This, in turn, will act as a distraction to the development team — they might accidentally waste time on those useless activities, instead of delivering new features.

This example clearly demonstrates the inferiority of functional programming — it makes refactoring too easy:

[StefanHoutzager]

Well said. The man has more to say, f.e. (“most popular of my blog posts on Hacker News”): https://naildrivin5.com/blog/2011/08/01/why-i-wont-work-for-google-twitter-facebook.html