Functional Programming languages - Better?

[CptPicard]

Is it simply a matter of which paradigm we were exposed first?

Quite probably, and I maybe even likely. This is why I would be very curious to see what a programmer would be like who got exposed to functional programming first

FP does seem to be a bit challenging and/or mind-blowing for a lot of people who are used to procedurality/imperativeness... it was, for me, back in the day.

Actually, I think we've seen this before, people confusing "functional" with "procedural".

Yes, it's quite common, that's why I'm suspecting it.

[km0r3]

FP does seem to be a bit challenging and/or mind-blowing for a lot of people who are used to procedurality/imperativeness... it was, for me, back in the day.

Yes, it's quite common, that's why I'm suspecting it.

For those who don't know the difference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_programming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

[slavik]

After Lisping for quite a while and getting used to having automatic tailcall optimization and hence the ability to write CPS, I feel so incredibly tied down to the stack whenever I go back to a language that behaves like C does. It's like a straightjacket knowing that I always will have to just go back up the call stack... once you free your mind of those assumptions your view on writing code changes; but before that "switch" happens, it can really seem a bit weird because the C-mindset is so strong. This is one of the reasons why I would like to teach beginners in C -- C works better as a general case of Lisp, but not the other way around.

Write good C/C++ and your code will be tailcall optimised.

http://amitksaha.wordpress.com/2009/...ation-gcc-gdb/

[Shin_Gouki2501]

Using Haskell and its LLVM Backend you get quite notable Results(tail Call opt.?!)

[jase21]

As for Functional programming, Lisp is more suitable that any other. I quite often see people ignoring Lisp when they speak about functional programming, and speaks about Haskell, ML, etc.
There is a version of Lisp for parallel computing developed years before called QLisp, which is totally cool.
There are other languages where one can program in a Functional manner, like in ECMAScript based languages like JavaScript.

[CptPicard]

As for Functional programming, Lisp is more suitable that any other. I quite often see people ignoring Lisp when they speak about functional programming, and speaks about Haskell, ML, etc.

Well, IMO the important point about Lisp that it is the most "multiparadigm" of languages while also having the most cleanly defined core. It certainly has some core functional tools, most importantly the lambda, but Lisp is not "only" a functional language, although you can code in functional style in it.

Most importantly it's not "pure" which is an either/or proposition. Therefore, Lisp code lacks the useful theoretical guarantees that come from never, ever having side-effects...