Does functional programming work?

[retard]

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:04:13 +0100, Daniel de Kok wrote:

> On 2010-01-04 19:15:39 +0100, "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> said:
>> Aren't there people who swear by those languages for normal software
>> development purposes? And even if not, there are certainly languages
>> out there that are "cram everything into this paradigm, yay purity!"
>> and *are* either intended for everyday use or used by people for
>> everyday use.
> 
> Yes, just like some people swear by 'everything is impure' languages,
> and go lengths to achieve immutability (e.g. Java). Why are those
> prefering purity called religious, and those using completely 'impure'
> languages practical?
> 
> Pure, partially pure, impure. All regimes can be religious or practical,
> or both.

I think quite often the desire for practicality follows the principles of 
fundamentalism. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with this OT talk, 
but even as an atheist I admit that some religions are quite ok. But the 
fundamentalists are almost always dangerous to the persons near them. 
It's quite common to hear things like
 - "Everything must be modeled in UML 2.0"
 - "This development process solves all problems, even the ones 
introduced on the language level"
 - "C++ and template metaprogramming provides extreme optimal performance 
on this problem domain"
 - "Large doses of REST, AJAX, XML, and Web 2.0 cloud will so totally 
save this crappy project"
 - "100% coverage in unit tests is integral part of our process. It 
guarantees delivery of high quality end products"
 - "In clean code functions should accept only one parameter"

Most of the fundamentalist technologies exist - surprise, surprise - only 
in the imperative mainstream programmer world. That world is so full of 
all kinds of pseudo-science that it often makes me vomit. But it's often 
nicer than unemployment..