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How useful are functional programming languages? (mander.xyz)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by partner_boat_slug@mander.xyz to c/programming@programming.dev

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I hear they are good, make it easier to maintain code-bases. Most often I reach for python to get the job done. Does anyone have experiences with functional languages for larger projects?

In particular I am interested to learn more on how to handle databases, and writing to them and what patterns they come up with. Is a database handle you can write to not ... basically mutable state, the arch-nemesis of functional languages?

Are functional languages only useful with an imperative shell?

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[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago

They don't really let you do anything you couldn't do in Python, they just let you write more elegant code.

Personally I find ML-style languages to be difficult to read. They deliberately leave out a lot of the punctuation that makes code readable leading to code that just looks like a stream of words.

Rust is I think the best option here - it steals most of the good ideas from functional programming but has saner syntax.

Also you seem to be conflating pure languages with functional languages. I also made this mistake because Haskell is probably the best known functional language and it's also pure... But they're different things. OCaml is functional and not pure. You can use mutable variables to your heart's content.

TL:DR learn Rust not Haskell or OCaml.