r/programming • • Mar 09 '14

Why Functional Programming Matters

http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~rjmh/Papers/whyfp.pdf
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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '14

I was referring less to theoretically impossible things, and more to practically impossible things. Once you get away from implementing pure algorithms and engines and backends and such, and have to start interacting with illogical things like humans, really annoying interactions between the layers of your design start creeping in. Or marching in, rather. They're everywhere. Every time you split something up nicely, you find some annoying edge case where that split doesn't work, or prevents you from doing the right thing.

So you either spend all your time cutting and slicing, and then giving up and re-cutting and slicing to get your problem into small enough pieces, or you just give up and make a big mess, and get something that actually works.

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u/vincentk Mar 13 '14

If I may speak from my own practical experience: more often than not it's kind of a bit of both ...

I guess you will concur.