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Comment by nepstein | Hacker News Reader

Nice article and effective demonstration of the FunctionalPlus library.

That said, this makes me a bit nervous about shoe-horning functional programming into contexts where it is inappropriate. FunctionalPlus aside, C++ is very clearly designed for an object oriented style (even the name, C++, refers to "C plus objects").

Going too far down the path of working against the intent of the standards committee seems like a recipe for trouble (unless you're just talking about hobby projects).

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I completely disagree - C++ is a multi-paradigm language and the C++ standard is already chock full of non-OO stuff.

The example code in the article also makes use of objects such as std::string, sets etc.

In fact the only part of the standard library that can be considered OO, iostream, is considered an overengineered disaster.

I actually happen to like iostream, for the reasons of it being standard and extendible; just don't expect any particular performance out of it.

I'm not sure I agree that STL that containers are explicitly not OO.

That said, I don't disagree that C++ can support functional programming. I would just argue there are languages better suited for this.

(edited for clarity)

The author of the first STL has famously said that, even after all these decades, he has never written any C++ code that uses OO inheritance, because he hasn't found a use for it.

The STL is mainly a generic library, not an OO library.

Yes, Stepanov is not exactly an OO fan. This interview with him, were he declared that "OO is an Hoax", is great:

http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html

As another comment points out, C++ is already full of non-OO components (take a look at the STL's <algorithm> interface for example). Moreover, the current path of the standards committee is clearly moving away from the gool-ol' OO and closer to the newer strong typing with better generics.

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