All Questions
Tagged with functional-programming programming-languages
60 questions
75
votes
4
answers
16k
views
What are the biggest differences between F# and Scala?
F# and Scala are both functional programming langugages that don't force the developer to only use immutable datatypes. They both have support for objects, can use libraries written in other languages ...
- 14.9k
59
votes
12
answers
12k
views
What programming language generates fewest hard-to-find bugs? [closed]
What language, in your opinion, allows the average programmer to output features with the least amount of hard-to-find bugs? This is of course, a very broad question, and I'm interested in very broad ...
54
votes
11
answers
12k
views
"Easy to reason about" - what does that mean? [closed]
I have heard a lot of times when other developers use that phrase to "advertise" some patterns or developing best practices. Most of the time this phrase is used when you are talking about benefits of ...
- 3,166
43
votes
7
answers
10k
views
Functional Programming on the rise?
I have noticed lately that functional programming languages are gaining popularity. I recently saw how the Tiobe Index shows an increase in their popularity in comparison to the last year although ...
- 2,676
37
votes
3
answers
11k
views
Do all functional languages use garbage collection?
Is there a functional language which allows to use stack semantics - automatic deterministic destruction at the end of the scope?
- 579
36
votes
6
answers
6k
views
Why do some functional programming languages use a space for function application?
Having looked at some languages for functional programming, I always wondered why some fp-languages use one or more whitespace characters for function application (and definition), whereas most (all?) ...
- 470
28
votes
7
answers
22k
views
Purest functional programming language(s)? [closed]
I'm interested in better learning functional programming. To do so, it seems obvious that I should force myself to use the purest possible functional programming language. Hence, I'm here asking, more ...
- 1,364
28
votes
6
answers
13k
views
how a pure functional programming language manage without assignment statements?
When reading the famous SICP, I found the authors seem rather reluctant to introduce the assignment statement to Scheme in Chapter 3. I read the text and kind of understand why they feel so.
As ...
- 2,075
24
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Why are cons lists associated with functional programming?
I have noticed that most functional languages employ a singly-linked list (a "cons" list) as their most fundamental list types. Examples include Common Lisp, Haskell and F#. This is different to ...
- 1,434
23
votes
11
answers
8k
views
If we can do functional programming with Python, do we need a specific functional programming language? [closed]
Using generators and lambda, we can do functional programming with Python. You can also achieve the same thing with Ruby.
So the question is: why do we need specific functional programming languages ...
- 3,905
19
votes
5
answers
3k
views
What makes JVM so much versatile to support so many JVM languages?
JVM supports so many languages other than Java like Groovy,Clojure,Scala etc which are functional languages unlike Java(I am referring to Java before Version 8 where Lambda's are not supported) that ...
- 5,217
19
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Using uniqueness types to implement safe parallelism
I've been interested in uniqueness types as an alternative to monads in pure functional languages for some time; unfortunately, this is kind of an esoteric area of CS research and online resources ...
- 467
17
votes
6
answers
4k
views
A language based on limiting amount of arguments passed to functions
The idea is inspired by the fact operators such as +, -,%, etc. can be seen as functions with either one or two arguments passed, and no side-effects. Assuming I, or someone else, writes a language ...
user232573
17
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Is higher-rank parametric polymorphism useful?
I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with generic methods of the form:
T DoSomething<T>(T item)
This function is also called parametrically polymorphic (PP), specifically rank-1 PP.
Let's say ...
- 1,763
17
votes
4
answers
3k
views
What is an example of a continuation not implemented as a procedure?
An interesting discussion about the distinction between callbacks and continuations over on SO has prompted this question. By definition, a continuation is an abstract representation of the logic ...
- 2,903