Personal Thoughts on the Current Functional Programming Bandwagon

The post says the current enthusiasm for functional programming comes partly from a generational need to distinguish itself from what came before. It argues that language choices are often tied to identity and group belonging, and that attempts to justify one language as objectively best are unreliable.

Reading notes

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• The author compares the current functional programming wave to earlier debates around Git and language choices.
• He argues that people often defend language choices with biased reasoning instead of neutral logic.
• The post frames the hype as a reaction against the previous generation and against legacy.
• It says functional programming is only one paradigm among many, not the winner over the rest.
• It lists concepts that the current discussion is helping more programmers learn, including first class functions, higher order functions, closures, immutability, lazy evaluation, tail call optimization, list comprehensions, type inference, pattern matching, and monadic effects.
• It treats monads as the hardest concept to understand and connects them to side effects and referential transparency.
• It notes that ideas similar to monads appear in JavaScript promises, Rust option types, Java Optional, and Swift Optional.
• It presents functional programming as useful for large data transformations, parallel execution, and distributed systems.
• It presents Haskell as an academic language that compiles research ideas into one place.
• It presents Clojure as an attempt to bring functional ideas to the Java world.
• It presents Elixir as the author’s preferred choice because it brings Erlang’s industrial strengths forward.
• It predicts that hybrid languages such as Go, Swift, and Rust will be more common than purely functional languages.