TBH Rust is pretty nice, it borrows (pun intended) a lot of ideas from the functional world (algebraic data types, traits, closures, affine types to an extent, composition over inheritance, and the general vibe of type-driven development), but it’s much easier to write fast, efficient code, integrate with decades of libraries in imperative languages, and the ecosystem somehow feels mature already.
Rust solves a specific problem, and it’s good at letting you write correct programs with low resource usage. It’s definitely a huge improvement on C and C++.
That said, I find a language like Clojure is far more productive because it’s more expressive, and development is done interactively. With Clojure, you start up your program, connect the editor to it, and evaluate code as you go seeing changes live. Once you’ve worked this way, it’s really hard to go back to having to compile your whole program each time you want to see what it’s doing. It’s like having a conversation with the compiler. It makes it very easy to experiment with different ways to solve a problem, and it gives a lot of confidence because you always see exactly what the code is doing. Clojure also interops with JVM and Js runtimes, so those entire ecosystems are available for use.
I agree that they fit different niches! My point was that with modern CPU architectures, imperative languages make it much easier to write fast&efficient code just because the hardware was pretty much engineered with C in mind. IMHO Rust offers the best of both worlds when it comes to systems/low-level dev.
Modern C compilers are a fascinating blend of functional and imperative, that’s true; and I didn’t say that C is “close to how the modern architectures work”. However, mainstream modern architectures are almost always engineered with C in mind primarily, and this is also acknowledged in the article you’ve linked. Rust, having a lot of similarities to C in terms of its underlying memory model, calling conventions, and control flow primitives, can often benefit from those hardware patterns and optimizations in a way that’s more difficult to replicate with a functional language (especially so given most of them are GC-d due to their memory model). The closest I’ve seen in terms of easy-to-write-quick-code is OCaml, but even there the fast paths are often written in a very much imperative style. Idris2 also seems promising if they manage to get a GC-less mode working. Maybe also Roc, but I’ve not taken a look at it yet.
Note that I write all of this as someone spending a lot of their work time programming in a functional language (Haskell), with Rust being mostly for hobby stuff. It just always surprises me how much easier it is to write fast code in Rust, and yet also how much of my Haskell intuition was applicable when I was learning it.
Typically this is true, but it’s certainly possible to get comparable performance with functional style. Carp, which I linked above, basically uses the same approach to memory management as Rust. It doesn’t rely on GC.
I also find that for most cases it really doesn’t matter all that much unless you’re in a specific domain like writing drivers, making a game engine, etc. Computers are plenty fast nowadays, and ergonomics tend to be more important than raw performance.
There’s plenty of real world code written in functional languages. Also, this idea that FP is somehow more complex is complete nonsense. Lisp family are some of the easiest languages to learn.
Sure yeah, I’ve done lots of UI programming with Clojure. It works great. I’ve also made small games. Why do you think it would be more difficult than with imperative style?
I’m just a hobbyist but…are you guys using exceptions like they’re conditional statements?? I thought those were for only when shit is seriously wrong and execution can’t continue in the current state. Like if some resource was in a bad state or some input was malformed.
Or maybe I haven’t worked on anything complex enough, I dunno.
As a rule, exceptions should indeed be used for behaviors that are outside normal execution flow. For example, you might throw an exception if a file you’re trying to access doesn’t exist, or a network call fails, etc.
You don’t want to use exceptions in normal control flow, because they’re extremely slow. Every time you throw an exception, it has to collect a stacktrace, which is hundreds, if not thousands, of calculations, compared to a handful of calculations for returning a boolean or an enum variant.
You can set up a global exception handler in some frameworks. By having multiple (not a crazy amount) of exceptions, you can set up logic for how to handle that kind of error. Then you can just throw the exception instead of writing individual catch blocks.
This is especially helpful in things like a REST API where user input can cause all kinds of fun, let alone network issues, problems with your data source, etc.
I suppose it depends on the language? For the most part I think you’re right. Exceptions are only used (if at all) in situations where a program diverges unexpectedly from its normal flow. But take a language like Python. They’re just everywhere. Even your plain old for loop ends on an exception, and that’s just business as usual.
Python programmers appear to actively promote the ‘easier to ask forgiveness, than permission’ style nowadays. This article has a measured take: https://realpython.com/python-lbyl-vs-eafp/
I straight up never got a nice answer from StackOverflow on this. Say you have 5 classes, each requiring access to the data members/functions of the others. What’s a nice way to solve this problem? I’ve thought of only two nice shit methods:
Pass pointers/shared-pointers etc to each class, but not through the constructor but a setter function
Pass lambdas or std::function everywhere. Yuck! Still doesn’t put each object in a valid state in the constructor.
The. real question is whether this problem needs to be modelled using classes in the first place. The alternative is to just have a set of composable functions that take a piece of data and return a modified version that can be passed to a different function.
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Does external logging not happen outside of OOP?
If so, why not?
It does, hence why it breaks the paradigm.
The paradigm breaks if anything is logged?
I feel like I’m missing a few steps in the logic.
Logging tends to happen as a side effect that’s completely outside the whole class hierarchy.
functional programming ftw
You can’t spell “functional programming” without “fun”.
Functional programming is perfect for all my projects that I don’t start!
Been working in Clojure for over a decade now, and would never never go back to using imperative/OOP at this point.
TBH Rust is pretty nice, it borrows (pun intended) a lot of ideas from the functional world (algebraic data types, traits, closures, affine types to an extent, composition over inheritance, and the general vibe of type-driven development), but it’s much easier to write fast, efficient code, integrate with decades of libraries in imperative languages, and the ecosystem somehow feels mature already.
Rust solves a specific problem, and it’s good at letting you write correct programs with low resource usage. It’s definitely a huge improvement on C and C++.
That said, I find a language like Clojure is far more productive because it’s more expressive, and development is done interactively. With Clojure, you start up your program, connect the editor to it, and evaluate code as you go seeing changes live. Once you’ve worked this way, it’s really hard to go back to having to compile your whole program each time you want to see what it’s doing. It’s like having a conversation with the compiler. It makes it very easy to experiment with different ways to solve a problem, and it gives a lot of confidence because you always see exactly what the code is doing. Clojure also interops with JVM and Js runtimes, so those entire ecosystems are available for use.
Incidentally, there’s a Lisp style language that embraces a lot of Rust principles. https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp
I agree that they fit different niches! My point was that with modern CPU architectures, imperative languages make it much easier to write fast&efficient code just because the hardware was pretty much engineered with C in mind. IMHO Rust offers the best of both worlds when it comes to systems/low-level dev.
That’s not actually true, modern architecture works much closer to the way functional languages work https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
Modern C compilers are a fascinating blend of functional and imperative, that’s true; and I didn’t say that C is “close to how the modern architectures work”. However, mainstream modern architectures are almost always engineered with C in mind primarily, and this is also acknowledged in the article you’ve linked. Rust, having a lot of similarities to C in terms of its underlying memory model, calling conventions, and control flow primitives, can often benefit from those hardware patterns and optimizations in a way that’s more difficult to replicate with a functional language (especially so given most of them are GC-d due to their memory model). The closest I’ve seen in terms of easy-to-write-quick-code is OCaml, but even there the fast paths are often written in a very much imperative style. Idris2 also seems promising if they manage to get a GC-less mode working. Maybe also Roc, but I’ve not taken a look at it yet.
Note that I write all of this as someone spending a lot of their work time programming in a functional language (Haskell), with Rust being mostly for hobby stuff. It just always surprises me how much easier it is to write fast code in Rust, and yet also how much of my Haskell intuition was applicable when I was learning it.
Typically this is true, but it’s certainly possible to get comparable performance with functional style. Carp, which I linked above, basically uses the same approach to memory management as Rust. It doesn’t rely on GC.
I also find that for most cases it really doesn’t matter all that much unless you’re in a specific domain like writing drivers, making a game engine, etc. Computers are plenty fast nowadays, and ergonomics tend to be more important than raw performance.
Functional Programming Theory: 500 pages of lambda calculus and endofunctors
Functional Programming Practice: Quicksort
There’s plenty of real world code written in functional languages. Also, this idea that FP is somehow more complex is complete nonsense. Lisp family are some of the easiest languages to learn.
Would you make a game with functional programming? Or anything with a GUI?
Sure yeah, I’ve done lots of UI programming with Clojure. It works great. I’ve also made small games. Why do you think it would be more difficult than with imperative style?
Lots of things with a GUI, but games are better left for ECS.
Ok. I just read the wiki and it’s interesting. What’s a good resource for learning deeper about ECS?
I misread Exceptioncatcher as Exceptionhatcher and I think it still fits
I believe the lifecycle goes ExceptionLayer, ExceptionIncubator, ExceptionHatcher
It’s critical you don’t throw your exceptions too early, they need to learn to fly first 🤣
I thought that’s why you throw them?
I’m just a hobbyist but…are you guys using exceptions like they’re conditional statements?? I thought those were for only when shit is seriously wrong and execution can’t continue in the current state. Like if some resource was in a bad state or some input was malformed.
Or maybe I haven’t worked on anything complex enough, I dunno.
That’s how it starts. Nice and simple. Everyone understands.
Until
and you decide you want to recover from that situation, but you don’t want to refactor all your code.
Suddenly, catching exceptions and rerunning seems like a good idea. With that normalized, you wonder what else you can recover from.
Then you head down the rabbit hole of recovering from different things at different times with different types of exception.
Then it turns into confusing flow control.
The whole Result<ReturnValue,Error> thing from Rust is a nice alternative.
As a rule, exceptions should indeed be used for behaviors that are outside normal execution flow. For example, you might throw an exception if a file you’re trying to access doesn’t exist, or a network call fails, etc.
You don’t want to use exceptions in normal control flow, because they’re extremely slow. Every time you
throwan exception, it has to collect a stacktrace, which is hundreds, if not thousands, of calculations, compared to a handful of calculations for returning a boolean or an enum variant.You can set up a global exception handler in some frameworks. By having multiple (not a crazy amount) of exceptions, you can set up logic for how to handle that kind of error. Then you can just throw the exception instead of writing individual catch blocks.
This is especially helpful in things like a REST API where user input can cause all kinds of fun, let alone network issues, problems with your data source, etc.
I suppose it depends on the language? For the most part I think you’re right. Exceptions are only used (if at all) in situations where a program diverges unexpectedly from its normal flow. But take a language like Python. They’re just everywhere. Even your plain old
forloop ends on an exception, and that’s just business as usual.Python programmers appear to actively promote the ‘easier to ask forgiveness, than permission’ style nowadays. This article has a measured take: https://realpython.com/python-lbyl-vs-eafp/
I guess you could call this an OOPsie
Nice
😆
Feeling attacked with
LeggableandFleable. I’ve been known to write a concern or two in Ruby on Rails but what can I say? I like my code DRY.My biggest problem with it is that those aren’t verbs. You might have
LegCount -> CountableandFleaCount -> Countablethough.Yeah, that’s pretty annoying.
I straight up never got a nice answer from StackOverflow on this. Say you have 5 classes, each requiring access to the data members/functions of the others. What’s a nice way to solve this problem? I’ve thought of only two
niceshit methods:The. real question is whether this problem needs to be modelled using classes in the first place. The alternative is to just have a set of composable functions that take a piece of data and return a modified version that can be passed to a different function.
Well, what problems are you trying to solve by having the classes all access each other’s data members? Why is that necessary?
Repeat after me:
public static void main(String[] args)blasphemy!
Am I summoning the flying spaghetti monster?
I’m sorry, but the only spaghetti you get is a 17 levels deep
ifclause.The object man appears behind you while you’re coding and inserts a null reference that takes you a day to find.
We have been played for absolute fools
and like a goddamn fiddle!
Needs a
FactoryFactoryhttps://factoryfactoryfactory.net/