True enough, but runtime speed and efficiency given by f.ex. Rust / Zig or even Golang should not be underestimated at all. It can make a gigantic difference especially in situations where the single beefy server cannot take it anymore and people add 100x complexity by starting to cluster stuff; those much more difficult languages will save your hide for another year or two more in the future. Though nowadays with load balancers and everything around them that’s less of an issue, admittedly.
dimitarvp
murrgelb
This is a very interesting discussion. We’ve seen effect-systems and immutability as characteristics (and even type systems - huh?).
I do 100% agree, that immutability is a differentiator for functional languages. However, what is also important is that functions are first-class. Passing functions as if they’re values and enabling higher order functions is the game-changer. This is what’s fundamental to implement different effect systems with ease. Monads? Sure just do it. Dependency injection? Free.
There are different ways to control side-effects. The trend in Haskell went from monad-transformers (which don’t compose) to free monads, to imitating an algebraic effect system. Man, the complexity. Scala did the same with catz and scalaz.
Elixir tends to be more pragmatic. What do we want to achieve? Is it for testing? Maybe use mocking or dependency injection? Is it for abstraction? Yeah, you can achieve 99% and implement composable abstraction without knowing category theory. We can do that, since we functions as first-class.
That said, I’d go with what @jam and @dimitarvp said: Elixir is a pragmatic functional programming language (as is e.g. clojure - no one will ever challenge clojure for not being functional).
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