Does functional programming work?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

retard wrote:
> 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.

Meh. Most of the fundamentalist technologies exist in environments that 
are being used and need improvement.

Andrei