Comment by innocentoldguy 3 days ago
I think Clojure is the better option if you want to do FP using the JVM ecosystem. The problem (for me, anyway) I've run into with Scala is that it supports both functional programming and object-oriented programming. Every code base I've worked on in Scala has ended up being a hodgepodge of both, which I find annoying.
However, the best functional programming language is, of course, Elixir. :D
Elixir getting a strong type system is interesting, but watch out for gleam though
But they still miss the computation expressions, which open interesting possibilities like https://github.com/CaptnCodr/Fli and https://github.com/fsprojects/FsHttp
Gleam lacks lisp-style macros, and its implementations of BEAM and OTP are not exhaustive. For example, Gleam does not support:
- Hot updates.
- Full distributed system support.
– Low-level process manipulation.
- Named processes.
- Advanced supervision strategies.
- Behaviours other than GenServer.
- Type-safe distributed messaging.
- And several other things that I value in BEAM and OTP.
I can't justify trading the full power of BEAM and OTP for static typing. To be fair, though, I've written a lot of code in both statically and dynamically typed languages, and static typing isn't something I value much (to the point that you might say I don't care about it at all :D).
I knew otp was still suboptimal in gleam, but thanks for mentioning all these additional points!
Funny how preferences and priorities vary among devs, I need my static type system! :-) But note even in static type systems there are variations. I'm talking about an hindley milner type system with its type inference like the one in fsharp
Why? The business logic part is where Elixir outshines Gleam the most, isn’t it? What do you gain by doing this?
(I am genuinely curious and not trying to be snarky.)
Evaluated F# vs Clojure. Speed of certain algorithms just lacked for me. Value types particularly in tail recursive stacks shines in F# compared to the JVM in general. As usual YMMV
Isn't Clojure similarly (or even moreso) multiparadigm?
i don't think it is. i would say it is functional + bridges to the jvm (which is why it has been ported to many other platforms... there is not that much stuff in the language itself).
it is functional (value) programming first. there are tools to hook in the object jvm stuff but this is not the natural grain of the language.
clojure is pretty much all values and functions (and some macroes).
+ some concurrency stuff
there is no class, there is no inheritance, you don't even have information hiding (no private etc.). you have protocols and multimethods.
(well technically there is private because java but it is not obvious to use and not what you expect, you will very rarely see that in clojure codebases)
honestly it is a nice small yet powerful language, with not too many kludges. my personal coding is either clojure or rust (which has way more kludges, but better than the other stuff in the typed fast compiled world at least for me).
> Every code base I've worked on in Scala has ended up being a hodgepodge of both
Is there something about that that has bothered you? Working in Scala codebases, I've found the best ones to work in are the ones that embrace Scala's multiparadigm nature. When programmers try to solve every problem with OO, they end up adding more and more layers to get the job done. When programmers try to solve every problem with FP, they end up resorting to sophisticated techniques that are unapproachable for other engineers. I think the simple parts of OO and the simple parts of FP go much, much further together than simple OO or simple FP can go by themselves. Have you seen something different?