5

!rant

Do you think it is worth learning functional programming and specifically haskell. It seems like a really good concept, but a lot of people claim that it's not applicable in real scenarios.

Comments
  • 2
    Did a little bit of Haskell in 2nd year uni, everyone else said it was a complete mindfuck
  • 0
    @d4ng3r0u5 was it useful later in your career?
  • 1
    Functional programming is absolutely relevant in real-word scenarios. Using it all time in React, for instance. And R code. My C# also gets more and more functional over time.

    As for Haskell...well, handy for enforcing the discipline while learning, but obviously not a massive amount of jobs in it. Popular with Standard Chartered Bank, though.
  • 1
    @MarkoVlaic0 Well I haven't used it since. But I've only been working as a developer for 4.5 years.
  • 0
    @platypus I also heard about FP while I was learning javascript, but I didn't understand it well. That's why I want to learn it in a fully functional language.
  • 0
    @Hu-bot0x58 probably to some extent, but I don't always write pure functions and things like that.
  • 0
    @d4ng3r0u5 Ok, thank you for your reply :)
  • 1
    Functional programming is super useful! Haskell... Ehhh. Probably reinforces FP. Never learned it. But functional is good in most languages.
  • 1
    @MarkoVlaic0
    The real benefit of learning something like Haskell isn't from the ability to use Haskell to make stuff, but from all the very different ideas that you have to stuff into your head while learning Haskell because it's a sharp departure from the assembly/machine logic based view of computers.

    In many cases these ideas just reinforce good practices (encoding behaviour into type systems, clean modular code), in other cases they may provide tools or ways of thinking which you may never have come across before (deterministically choosing the behaviour of function composition/sequencing via monads, mapping and functors, folds, testing with QuickCheck, option types, pattern matching, algebraic datatypes, green threads, immutability, etc.).

    You'll see these ideas cropping up in quite a few of the newer languages (Rust etc.), frameworks (React etc.), as well as updates to older languages (Java streams etc.).
  • 0
    @RememberMe Thank you, I already started learning with Real world haskell. We'll see where it goes.
  • 1
    @MarkoVlaic0 I would actually not recommend RWH, check this out https://github.com/bitemyapp/...
  • 0
    @RememberMe Thank you, it seems cool I will definetly check it out :)
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