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Comment by patientplatypus | Hacker News Reader

FP is fun, but there aren't many good languages for it. Haskell is too academic, Clojure is fun but hasn't taken off, Scala is too complicated (Java with FP shoehorned in, who thought this was a good idea?).

I like FP but 90% of the time you'd be better off with just Python because other developers will be able to work with it and there are libraries. Or Golang or Node or whatever.

Frustrating, but it is what it is.

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I find the characterisation of Scala very inaccurate.

It is nothing like Java at all. A Scala code would look so different compared to a Java code.

For an example, in Java you would create a class with static variable as a Singleton object. In Scala, you just create an Object.

Type inference, Option type, pattern matching, it is nothing like Java with FP shoehorned in.

How about OCaml?

https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2019sp/textbook/

https://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/functional_programming.htm...

This is a newer one, with advanced topics and probably other changes: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2019fa/textbook/

In my bubble Clojure has taken off quite nicely, many companies are solving hard problems with it and you get to enjoy all the libraries of the Java eco-system :)

But it is indeed a very different approach to programming than let's say Python or Node.

> Haskell is too academic

How so?

You know there has been a growing number of professional Haskell developers for the past 5-7 years right?

Have you tried Elixir?

Ok fair. Elixir is nothing short of amazing.

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