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Comment by jbb555 | Hacker News Reader

Because it's a functional language. And other than noisy functional language fans, most people prefer imperative programming.

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Prefer or know?

Despite being taught functional programming, I didn't get it until I learned Clojure.

If my first language had been a Scheme instead of Basic / Java I probably would have preferred functional languages.

Now functional languages are another tool in my belt, and I frequently apply their patterns when I'm in more imperative languages.

I think most people prefer imperative languages, even after they've learned about functional programming. The simple evidence that I see is that functional programming has been around for a long, long time and it never took off except for in certain niche circles and academia.

Do you prefer functional programming or not? It sounds like you do (or at least very open to it) although you didn't learn Scheme first... So why does everybody else have to learn Scheme first in order to reach the same conclusion as you?

I don't think it's true. I didn't learn SQL first and now I prefer that DSL for a whole host of problems. People aren't really that static.

Functional programming patterns are certainly very useful to know. However, the fact that you can apply those same patterns elsewhere seems to seems to negate the need for switching to purely FP languages because you gain next to nothing and you lose almost everything.

I'm not entirely sure why this is getting downvoted. I'm a moderately noisy FP fan myself, but this statement does seem, on the balance of evidence, to be true. I'm interested to know why.

Maybe because dismissing those who appreciate the advantages of functional programming as "noisy fans" is condescending, and implies that their preferences are based on emotional rather than rational grounds. I'm not a noisy fan of FP at all, but I like a lot of concepts (like immutability), and I do adapt them in my code

I think noisy fan was meant to imply that people who are in favour of functional programming languages tend to be more vocal in their views, rather than those who are in favour of imperative programming languages.

This is probably because imperative languages are the majority, so there's no need to soapbox, rather than anything related to the communities or the merits involved.

And if the downvoted comment used the phrase "more vocal in one's views" instead probably it wouldn't get downvoted much

The impression is that their preference runs on the ideological/pragmatic divide rather than the emotional/rational. (Not that I wouldn't want to be an FP samurai myself, along with exercising more regularly, flossing, and achieving inner peace )

Well, hinting that they're ideologically biased wouldn't be fair either, if one doesn't bother to substantiate it in any way

Note that a lot of people with "preferences" set on imperative languages have simply never stepped out of this paradigm and tried something else.

I don't think it's symmetrical - I'd bet there's more C# programmers who've never dabbled in F#, or even heard of it, than the other way round : )

> dismissing those who appreciate the advantages of functional programming as "noisy fans" is condescending

Take a look at the craziest comments in a Go thread and "noisy fans" seems a little generous.

1. Go isn't a functional language

2. I didn't say noisy fans don't exist, only that it's unfair to automatically lump people with preference for functional approach into this category

> Go isn't a functional language

And that seems to be sufficient cause for the FP enthusiasts to lose their shit in Go threads.

That sort of thing is the only exposure many of us have to FP people, for better or worse. When they pop in to tell everybody they're doing it wrong in the craziest fashion possible.

Probably because what we're taught as programming is imperative programming, then moving on to OO, etc. If we were taught FP from the start (we, broadly speaking), then people would probably be fans of FP.

It's funny how SQL is a declarative set-language, very different from imperative and other paradigms, yet nobody seems to bat an eye about it having its proper place and role.

Because the article wasn't comparing F# to imperative languages. It was comparing it to other functional languages and asking why F# is unpopular among functional programmers.

Because most people familiar with programming can grasp an imperative language easily even if they may not be completely familiar with the language.

Functional programming is like alien to them because it may not be entirely obvious what the instructions are doing at first glance.

Like Artificial Intelligence, Functional Programming Ascendency has been 10 years away for the last 50 years.

My understanding is that it's more of a multi-paradigm language; more like Scala than Haskell. And it's very apparent that modern C# itself has been influenced by FP concepts a lot (in compare to Java, for instance). You don't need to be a "noisy fan" to see the benefits of the functional approach.

imperative programming works pretty well in F#.

Wow. That's a bold stance on HN.

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