In our recent, erm, "discussion" one oft-mentioned issue came up:
Is Java's downfall foreshadowed by the lack of FP constructs, and will closures be "too little, too late" when they finally arrive? and, as so often happens in discussions of this nature, respondents divided into the pro-FP and pro-OO camps (plus one who seemed to think that *any* abstraction was good, regardless of paradigm, and that computers would be programming themselves in the near future anyhow...) A *few* posts later, the typical war-lines were drawn: "Future programming *will* be (at least partly) functional in nature, the needs of concurrency demand it!" vs "Object-Orientation works, expanding Java like this just adds unnecessary complexity, and FP has never really left academia anyway" It's very common for developers deeply embedded in the world of objects to deride FP as being "complex", "academic", and "overly abstract", but what really caught my attention this time was that the pro-FP crowd were giving very definite concrete examples of the benefits to be obtained, whereas the pro-OO crowd seemed to be hard waving around nebulous principles - this is definitely a role reversal when compared to the usual stereotypes. Chances are that I'm biased. After all, I'm very active in the scala community and a strong believer in the principles behind functional programming, though I'd like to think I can see the benefits (and flaws) in both paradigms. I'd be interested to know the general opinion. Is functional programming still widely considered to be "abstract nonsense"? -- Kevin Wright mail/google talk: [email protected] wave: [email protected] skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
