Ask HN: Is the future about functional programming languages? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the future about functional programming languages?

9 pointssentinel5 comments

There's a lot of talk recently about functional programming languages (Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Scala) being the next big programming languages in software development.

Reasons such as the slowing of the possibility for CPU's to become faster, instead multi-core CPU's becoming available, and the way functional languages are built for concurrency (on multi-core CPU's) and fit 'like a glove' in a cloud computing environment etc. are the main points talked about in recent articles.

Is there a real case for functional programming languages becoming popular in the future? What's the best choice for the functional language one should invest time in learning?

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> Is there a real case for functional programming languages becoming popular in the future?

Most definitely. Almost every language is incorporating functional idioms and we see more and more code written in a more functional fashion.

> What's the best choice for the functional language one should invest time in learning?

If you're a newbie, I would recommend JavaScript. It's the easiest to pick up and has the best resources out there. You can learn all of the functional idioms in JavaScript and then later learn to apply them elsewhere.

If you're a more seasoned programmer, I would say give them all a test spin and figure out which one you like. I, personally, think Erlang has the most sane syntax, with Scala a close second. Erlang is a bit more powerful, but with Scala you get access to the JVM. I've learned them both, but am able to apply Scala more because the libraries are much more vast.

If by "all the functional idioms" you mean "doing stuff with functions and whatnot", then by all means, recommend JavaScript.

However, once you get done playing with maps and folds, you'll find that there's a whole world of more important things that the functional paradigm gives you. And these depend on types, and referential transparency.

agree

My own future certainly is. I've written my own language Fexl http://fexl.com for very specific purposes in my work.

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