Does functional programming work?

[retard]

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:23:03 +0000, dsimcha wrote:

> == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a at a.a)'s article
>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message
>> news:hhgvqk$8cj$2 at digitalmars.com...
>> > An interesting counterpoint to the usual FP hype:
>> >
>> > http://prog21.dadgum.com/55.html
>> Didn't read the original article, but the one being linked to is
>> completely in line with how I feel about not just FP, but all
>> programming paradigms, for example, OO: It's great as long as you don't
>> pull a Java or (worse yet) a Smalltalk and try to cram *everything*
>> into the paradigm.
> 
> I actually think Smalltalk had the better idea.  Java doesn't support
> any paradigm besides OO well, and neither does Smalltalk.  The
> difference is that, in Smalltalk, at least everything is an object, so
> you can do "pure" OO well.  Java is "almost pure" OO, but it lack of
> ints, floats, etc. being objects, combined with its lack of support for
> any paradigm that works well without ints, floats, etc. being objects,
> makes the language feel like a massive kludge, and leads to debacles
> like autoboxing to get around this.
> 
> In multiparadigm languages like D, C++ and C#, the lack of ints, floats,
> etc. being objects is less of an issue because, although it's a wart in
> the OO system, noone is forcing you to use the OO system for
> **everything**.

In Java generics doesn't work with primitive types, in D it does. And 
generics often happens to be the most useful way of providing 
polymorphism in that context. In "pure OOP languages" all primitives are 
objects so normal sub-typing works. That also solves the issue, although 
it has an impact on performance. These are the main reasons why Java 
feels kludgy in this area.