this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Programming

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[–] mvirts 60 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I propose a new paradigm:

Objectional programming

Functions don't return

Everything must be done by side effects

Global state mutation is inheritance

Every call is non blocking and spawns a new thread

???

Profit

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Functions don't return... equals goto. Everything must be done by side effects... all variables are global. Global state mutation is inheritance... no grok. Every call is non-blocking and spawns a new thread... atomic bomb for junior software engineers.

??? ... shorting the stock of the company that adopts this.

Profit!

[–] abhibeckert 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

??? … shorting the stock of the company that adopts this.

Screw that I'm going to invest... how do you think Elon Musk got so rich? He did it with sloppy engineering.

To get a first mover advantage, you have to be first. You don't get there by being a perfectionist.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I am currently working on a game for the Atari 2600, and you just gave a good outline of my code. And I love it.

[–] abhibeckert 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I fundamentally disagree with the idea that these are competing strategies.

Just like walking doesn't really compete, like at all, with flying in an aircraft, Functional and Object Oriented Programming are at their best when you use whichever approach makes sense for a given situation and in any reasonably complex software that means your code should be full of both.

OOP is really good at the high level structure of your software as well as efficiently storing data. FP is really good at business logic and algorithms.

Also, I take issue with the claim that OOP is all about "objects". It's also about classes. In fact I'd argue classes are more important than objects.

[–] bungle_in_the_jungle 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The older I get, the more "it depends".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This. Nothing is a silver bullet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Not even silver bullets.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Object-oriented design is about message-passing; messages are more important than objects. Classes are completely irrelevant -- there's an entire branch of object-oriented language design without classes!

[–] abhibeckert 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

there’s an entire branch of object-oriented language design without classes!

That's not OOP anymore. There's definitely a lot of OOP code out there (especially in the Java world) that goes way too far with inheritance and class structures, and good OOP code relies a lot less on classes - but they are still used and a critical component of the style of programming.

Object-oriented design is about message-passing;

I'd argue that's an implementation detail rather than part of OOP. Also it's rarely used in modern OOP languages because it's just too slow*. Unfortunately when you take it away some patterns are lost, but the trade off is generally worth it.

(* when I used to work in Objective-C, message sending was often slower than all of the rest of my code combined and in tight loops I'd often rewrite my OOP code as procedural C code in order to have acceptable performance. Never need to do that in Swift, which doesn't do messages)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Whatever it may have become in later years, Alan Kay, who is often called "The Father of Object-oriented Programming", outlined the message-passing idea as the main concept he was driving at, originally.

He also says that he probably misnamed it.

Here's a discussion in which the man himself makes a (small) appearance: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46592/so-what-did-alan-kay-really-mean-by-the-term-object-oriented

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

JavaScript is an example of how OOP can be done without classes (before they were added to appease Java enthusiasts).

[–] dneaves 4 points 1 year ago

Also, I take issue with the claim that OOP is all about "objects". It's also about classes.

Depending on the language, classes are just objects too. So its still just about objects.

[–] Pipoca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just like walking doesn't really compete, like at all, with flying in an aircraft, Functional and Object Oriented Programming are at their best when you use whichever approach makes sense for a given situation and in any reasonably complex software that means your code should be full of both.

I'm not really sure sure that's true.

In FP languages like Haskell, you get tools like algebraic data types, typeclasses, and pattern matching.

FP is really opposed to imperative programming, while objects are opposed to algebraic data types.

You can write OO code that's 100% fully functional, and you can write code in Haskell or rust where you barely notice you never once used an object.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'll just stick them together.

Signed, a Scala programmer.

[–] Pipoca 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah, OO and FP aren't really opposed. FP is opposed to imperative programming.

That said, most FP languages give you a slightly different set of tools to use. Algebraic data types and typeclasses are really, really nice.

Honestly, working in Haskell or rust, you don't really miss the fact that you have to jump through hoops to get traditional OO objects. There's just not really many cases where you need them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, me too.

Signed, an F# programmer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm really glad c# is absorbing more and more functional stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is nice for when C# is mandated, but it’ll never replace F#

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I feel in reality that statement is backwards hehe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Slightly jealous of the F#. Similar set of compelling features minus the JVM.

[–] Deckweiss 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If your program functions, it's functional.

[–] mvirts 9 points 1 year ago

Turns out I really love functional programming after all 😹

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

What if my program is objectionable?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

And if it doesn't have objects, then it has no class!

[–] Pipoca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Functions, here, being the key word.

Functions are pure mappings from input to output.

[–] Deckweiss 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Pipoca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with you that if you use functions it's functional.

But many people don't really realize how that contrasts with procedures and procedural code.

[–] superbirra 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Pipoca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apparently my brain silently inserted "ing with" into the middle of "program functions" a half dozen times without me noticing.

[–] superbirra 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

perchance you were objectively oriented?

[–] solrize 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Article is pretty lame. Not exactly wrong but doesn't convey a clear understanding.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, I was hoping for some examples of Functional Programming, since I'm unfamiliar with it.

I got a long form ad for their Haskell book at least!

[–] solrize 2 points 1 year ago

The free online book learnyouahaskell.com is very good.