disadvantages of functional paradigm

), “ReactiveX is a combination of the best ideas from the Observer pattern, the Iterator pattern, and functional programming.”. The “Update as you copy” technique isn’t too hard when you’re working with this simple Person object, but think about this: What happens when you have nested objects, such as a Family that has a Person who has a Seq[CreditCard], and that person wants to add a new credit card, or update an existing one? Having stated that, let me add a few caveats. Any time a Haskell function returns something wrapped in an IO, like IO[String], that function can only be used in certain places within a Haskell application. There’s enough food in the world to feed pretty much everyone. No piece of data in a functional program is modified twice by the same thread — let alone by two different threads. Unlike a statement, which is executed to assign variables, the evaluation of an expression produces a value. The prelude is a kinda of a distribution preloaded that comes with core. This is fine in pure lambda calculus because mathematics' "stack" is unlimited. I just wanted to buzz in with an anecdote because I'm learning Haskell right now as we speak. The code in that method (and one other method it calls) is at least 300 lines long, and is much more complex than the simple/naive quickSort algorithm I show. I am still waiting for the first great book Functional Design Patterns.). For this book, that’s the case regarding this section. The way that sort method works varies by Java version, but Java 8 calls a sort method in java.util.DualPivotQuicksort. Standard ML, F# and Haskell are afflicted by this problem. I think you’ll agree that Some["Al"], Some["Alvin"], and Some["Emily"] are different values. Of course, on real hardware, the stack is very much finite. Because pure functions have no side-effects or hidden I/O, programs built using functional paradigm are easy to debug. Re 1: I don't think that's true. It uses expressions instead of statements.… More accurately, you can think of it as being an Option that always returns a Some[YourDataTypeHere], such as a Some[Person] or a Some[String]. Not sure why ACM hides some of these older articles; don't they want to disseminate this information. Data out Most people find functional programming to be difficult to understand. Disadvantages of Functional Programming “People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. As mentioned, in the first view, FP purists see this as a drawback. There are a few disadvantages of FP as well but don’t worry, there is a way around to every problem. Functional Programming, Simplified (Scala edition), Functional Programming Background (Section), Scala and Functional Programming (Section), A First Look at “State” in Functional Programming, A Functional Game (With a Little Bit of State), Scala/FP Idiom: Update as You Copy, Don’t Mutate, A Quick Review of Scala’s for-expressions (for-comprehensions), How to Write a Scala Class That Can Be Used in a `for` Expression, How to Create a Scala Sequence Class to be Used in a ‘for’ Expression, How to Make Sequence Work in a Simple Scala `for` Loop, How To Make Sequence Work as a Single Generator in a `for` Expression, How to Enable Filtering in a Scala `for` Expression, How to Enable the Use of Multiple Generators in a Scala `for` Expression, Lessons that didn’t fit in the printed book, Using Scala Methods As If They Were Functions (Eta Expansion), How to Write Scala Functions That Take Functions as Input Parameters, Functional Programming, Simplified (Introduction), How to Write a ‘map’ Function in Scala, Scala/FP: Pure Function Signatures Tell All, Goals, Part 1: “Soft” Goals of This Book, Recursion: How to Write a ‘sum’ Function in Scala, A Note About Expression-Oriented Programming, How to Write and Use Scala Functions That Have Multiple Parameter Groups, Goals, Part 2: Concrete Goals of This Book, Functional Programming is Like Unix Pipelines, Recursion: How Recursive Scala Function Calls Work, Partially-Applied Functions (and Currying) in Scala, Recursion: Visualizing the recursive `sum` Function, Recursion: A Conversation Between Two Developers, Introduction to ScalaCheck, Part 2 (A more complicated example), Scala: The Differences Between `val` and `def` When Creating Functions, Appendix: Scala `for` expression translation examples, On Using `def` vs `val` To Define Abstract Members in Scala Traits. Disadvantages: Sometimes writing pure functions can reduce the readability of code. Maybe both should be CW. And it should also be noted that many languages are not pure imperative or pure functional, no matter how they're conventionally taught. When the problem domain is imperative, using a language with that characteristic is a natural and reasonable choice (since it is in general advisable to minimize the distance between the specification and implementation as part of reducing the number of subtle bugs). Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post. Looking away from the details of specific implementations of functional programming, I see two key issues: It seems comparatively rare that it is practical to choose a functional model of some real-world problem over an imperative one. Pitfalls/Disadvantages of Functional Programming [closed]. If that sounds hard core and limiting, well, it is. The functional programming paradigm was explicitly created to support a pure functional approach to problem solving. I haven’t discussed UI/GUI input/output in this section, but I discuss it more in the “Should I use FP everywhere?” section that follows. If you’re an FP purist, a drawback to using functional programming in Scala is that Scala supports both OOP and FP, and therefore it’s possible to mix the two coding styles in the same code base. As you can imagine, just because you wrap a String that you get from the outside world inside of a Some, that doesn’t mean the String won’t vary. As just one example of this, when you first start working with Scala and you have a List like this: it’s natural to write a for/yield expression like this: As you’ll see in the upcoming lessons, you can also write a recursive algorithm to solve this problem. Yes, this can be overcome by a smart-enough coder, but if you need Rock Star Coders for the task, it's because it's too bloody hard. your program is correct. I've been learning the fold class of functions now for three days. It's hard for me to think of many downsides to functional programming. There are excellent tools for discovering time and space behavior post facto, but to use them effectively you have to be expert already. (This is the flip side of one of its obvious strengths, being able to express what you want done rather than how you want the computer to do it.). The short answer is what I wrote in the Scala Cookbook and in the previous lesson: you write as much of your application’s code in an FP style as you can, and then you write a thin I/O layer around the outside of the FP code, like putting “I/O icing” around an “FP cake”: In reality, no programming language is really “pure,” at least not by my definition. As I wrote in the “What is Functional Programming” lesson, a pure function is a function (a) whose output depends only on its input, and (b) has no side effects. I don’t know about you, but when I first heard terms like combinator, monoid, monad, and functor, I had no idea what people were talking about. Naively recursing over a large dataset can make your program go boom. Writing pure functions is easy, but combining them into a complete application is where things get hard: All of the functions follow the same pattern: 1. A good tool can enable an expert to great things, but a great tool is one that enables the common man to approach what an expert can do normally, because that's by far the more difficult task. For many people, recursion doesn’t feel natural. Object-oriented programming tends to use more CPU than alternative options. We could pretend that it's an ideal world, if you like, when talking about each paradigm (for example, let's pretend that UNIX was written in SML when talking about functional disadvantages, instead of saying, imperative is advantageous because UNIX is written in C). Possibly for the same reason, I knew about recursion, but never had to use it. Not all functional languages are the same but to answer your question fully please look at the Haskell language. It's also true that you can't talk to your neighbor very easily, because functional-programming concepts are harder to teach and harder to learn than the object-oriented concepts behind languages like Smalltalk, Ruby, and C++. Most functional languages optimize tail recursion so that this doesn't happen, but making an algorithm tail recursive can force you to do some rather unbeautiful code gymnastics (e.g., a tail-recursive map function creates a backwards list or has to build up a difference list, so it has to do extra work to get back to a normal mapped list in the correct order compared to the non-tail-recursive version). I'm learning Haskell because the idea of separating functions from actions appeals to me and there are some really sexy theories behind implicit parallelization because of the isolation of pure functions from non-pure functions. Period. In a thick client project, the entire application is typically written in one large codebase that results in a binary executable that users install on their computers. This means it will probably be harder for you to write functional code, and it will almost certainly be harder for someone else to pick it up. Disadvantages of Functional Programming. For instance, when I first started working with Scala and needed a way to stub out new SBT projects, I wrote a Unix shell script. Mathematica, OCaml and Clojure are not. In fact, it's probably the other way around. Because this was for my personal use and I only work on Mac and Unix systems, creating a shell script was by far the simplest way to create a standard set of subdirectories and a build.sbt file. Functional programming is important in concept and paradigm, not necessary a particular language. Apply an algorithm (to transform the data) 3. As I noted in the previous chapter, in the 2016 version of Programming in Scala, Martin Odersky’s biography states, “He works on programming languages and systems, more specifically on the topic of how to combine object-oriented and functional programming.” Trying to merge the two styles appears to be an important goal for Mr. Odersky. Just as I did in the previous chapter, I’ll first cover the “drawbacks of functional programming in general”: After that I’ll look at the more-specific “drawbacks of functional programming in Scala”: I write more about “hidden inputs” to functions in the “Pure Functions” chapter. Beside the advantages of functional programming, there are several disadvantages as well. I cover FRP in a lesson later in this book, but if you’d like to learn more now, the RxScala project is located here, and Netflix’s “Reactive Programming in the Netflix API with RxJava” blog post is a good start. With Web applications like this, you have impure data coming into your Scala/Play application through data mappings and REST functions, and you probably also interact with impure database calls and impure network/internet I/O, but just like my football game, the “logic” portion of your application can be written with pure functions. They’re built on stateful, imperative operations. In this course, you’ll learn what functional programming is, how it’s used, and the features of Python that support it. See. "), its strength lies in the processing of mathematical tasks – in particular, that of algorithms. Of which there is a correspond implementation of foldl1' for foldl1. However, if I add a new type to Animal, I have to go through each function to add support for it: Notice, though, that the exact opposite is true for object-oriented languages. Course Overview The functional programming paradigm can be a powerful tool, especially as it can be integrated seamlessly with procedural and object-oriented code in Python. Other “thick client,” GUI frameworks like Swing and JavaFX have similar interfaces, where they are OOP and imperative by design. Instead of statements, It makes use of expressions. As another example, I wrote a little text editor that I named “AlPad,” and its major feature is that it lets me easily add and remove tabs to keep little notes organized: The way you write Swing code like this is that you first create a JTabbedPane: Once created, you keep that tabbed pane alive for the entire life of the application. In this article, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages alongside a practical example. The trick is to use difference lists: Thanks, Jared. One reason I may not have known about those mathematical terms is because my degree is in aerospace engineering, not computer science. First, you start with a case class: Then, when your niece is born, you write code like this: Later, when she gets married and changes her last name, you write this: After that line of code, emily2.lastName has the value "Wells". The advanced math terminology (monad, monoid, functor, etc.) A well-known downside of lazy functional programming (applies to Haskell or Clean but not to ML or Scheme or Clojure) is that it is very difficult to predict the time and space costs of evaluating a lazy functional program—even experts can't do it. The graphs online for these functions are confusing as hell for someone who never saw them in college. Disadvantage of the Object Oriented Programming The message based communication between many objects in a complex system is difficult to implement. While that is a potential drawback, many years ago I learned of a philosophy called “House Rules” that eliminates this problem. That can make it be an inefficient choice when there are technical limitations involved due to the size that it can end up being. There is no perldoc equivalent. As if all of this wasn't mind blowing, the functions that fold[lr]. http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~as/fpcourse/sigplan-why.ps.gz, http://carpanta.dc.fi.udc.es/pf/papers/sigplan-angry.ps.gz, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=286387. You can always change the rules later, but it’s important to start with something. There are a few disadvantages of FP as well but don’t worry, there is a way around to every problem. :D, @CrazyJugglerDrummer: I think that whole article is about this ;-). Advantages include correctness and fewer bugs. If you know about Functional Reactive Programming (FRP), please stand by; I write more on this point shortly. As one example of what I mean, in an Android football game I work on in my spare time, the OOP game framework I use provides an update method that I’m supposed to override to update the screen: Inside that method I have a lot of imperative GUI-drawing code that currently creates this UI: There isn’t a place for FP code at this point. I show those techniques in upcoming lessons. Below is a table listing the major programming paradigms and what sorts of problems they are commonly used for as well as some common disadvantages encountered. If you want to avoid that sort of debate and read an objective comparison of Haskell and Scala features, Jesper Nordenberg provides one of the most neutral “Haskell vs Scala” discussions I’ve read. Anything that is computable using lambda calculus is computable. I know, but I'd much rather be able to look at it somehow without downloading and opening it. For example, Joe Armstrong has written that Erlang processes — which are the equivalent of Akka actors — can be written in an imperative style. Two paragraphs ago I wrote, “the only way to loop over elements in a collection is to use recursion,” but that isn’t 100% true. 2020 Stack Exchange, Inc. user contributions under cc by-sa, "pitfalls of object oriented programming" isn't CW after 1800 views. As a simple example of this, when I owned a computer programming consulting company, the developers wanted a Java coding style that looked like this: As shown, they wanted curly braces on their own lines, and the code was indented four spaces. If you want extensibility, you need inheritance or typeclasses/existentials. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1786969/pitfalls-disadvantages-of-functional-programming/1787201#1787201. But, while these solutions are built into a language like Haskell, they are standalone libraries in Scala. To deal with this problem, independent libraries like Scalaz, Cats, and others have been created. @Jon: It depends thoroughly on the exact nature of the problem and on what sort of cache locality you get. Languages are just abstract rules, you cannot execute them. (Several FP experts say the same thing.) So it is not a beginner-friendly paradigm approach for new programmers. Writing pure functions is easy, but combining them into a complete application is where things get hard. Because I cover this topic in the next chapter, I won’t write any more about it here. When you’re working with these frameworks you have to conform to their styles at this interface point, but there’s nothing to keep you from writing the rest of your code in an FP style. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, objects are the key element of paradigms. It just makes it obvious that it’s impure.”. (This is the flip side of one of its obvious strengths, being able to express what you want done rather than how you want the computer to do it.) ), Functional idioms often do lots of inversion-of-control or laziness, which often has a negative impact on debugging (using a debugger). Scala doesn’t have a standard FP library. I cover this problem and its solution in several lessons later in this book. Perhaps less efficiencey Problems involving many variables or a lot of sequential activity are sometimes easier to handle imperatively or with object-oriented programming. Functional programming continues to play a key role today – more than 60 years after its initial use in the LISP interpreter . Also for number 4, F# will be a first class fully supported language in Visual Studio 2010, I think bullets 2-4 are not intrinsic to functional programming, but more artifacts of history/culture/etc. Artificial intelligence programs, for example, may not be suitable for procedural programming. Good info. Sometimes writing pure functions can reduce the readability of code. Want to improve this question? Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. In the same way that collections’ methods are replacements for custom for loops, they’re also replacements for many custom recursive algorithms. For over 20 years I’ve written imperative code where it was easy — and extraordinarily common — to mutate existing data. Fortunately, other FP developers ran into this problem long before I did, and they came up with ways to make this process easier. It’s a little early in this book for me to write about all of this, but ... the main benefit of the Haskell IO approach is that it creates a clear separation between (a) pure functions and (b) impure functions. Conversely, the web applications I’ve written in the last few years use (a) one of many JavaScript-based technologies for the UI, and (b) the Play Framework on the server side. For instance, you can open any Haskell book and find a discussion of the IO type and other built-in language features, but the same is not true for Scala. Remember, words like “update” and “mutate” are not in the FP vocabulary. In contrast to run-time programming, template meta-programming has non-mutuable variables and therefore requires the functional programming paradigm, most often used by recursion patterns. In this chapter I’ll look at the potential drawbacks of FP. I couldn't think of a better thread (well, one or two maybe) to help the interested reader reach their own conclusion on the precise merits (or lack thereof) of jdh's opinions. Having said that, it’s important to note how scala.util.Sorting.quickSort works. Haskell implements a foldl, and foldr for this. Personally, I like Scala’s support of both the OOP and FP paradigms because this lets me use whatever style best fits the problem at hand. In the tradition of Talcott Parsons and his conception of functional imperatives (goal attainment, adaptation, latency and integration) functionalists argue that there are four basic “system needs” for any society in sports (team, clubs etc) to run smoothly and that everyone will benefit. Now that you’ve seen some of the drawbacks of FP, I think I can provide a better answer. As I wrote in the “What is FP?” chapter, the thing that happens when you use only pure functions and immutable values is that you have to use recursion. Generally experts have no difficulty writing fast functional programs; and in fact some of the best-performing parallel programs on 8- and 16-core processors are now written in Haskell. It is a declarative type of programming style. Conversely, if I also worked on Microsoft Windows systems, or if I had been interested in creating a more robust solution like the Lightbend Activator, I might have written a Scala/FP application, but I didn’t have those motivating factors. It's more likely that someone starting functional programming will give up before realizing the promised productivity gains than will someone starting, say, Python or Visual Basic. * require as arguments and use internally in the reduction have two separate signatures, only one variant works on infinite lists (r), and only one of them is executed in constant memory (as I understand (L) because only it requires a redex). On top of this there is version with a slightly different syntax called foldr1 and foldl1 with different initial values. (In a terrific addition to this, adding Akka to the equation lets me use Scala the way other programmers use Erlang.). You don't have build the list backwards and reverse the return list. Is unlimited for me to think of many downsides to functional programming, there are a few caveats functions... Then again, I need to separate my answers into two parts objects is Even deeper programs, example... It be an inefficient choice when there are quite a few message based communication many... Style, use the rules I set forth in this chapter I looked the! Be suitable for procedural programming actually an image and I do n't think that true! Everyone on the team loved that style, use the rules I set in. To transform the data ) 3 stream of can be bit intimidating in concept and paradigm, necessary. Foldr1 and foldl1 with different initial values without side effects in functions coding phase when the project is... Let alone by two different threads lists: Thanks, Jared programming than calculating a description. People interested in using both paradigms within one language see this as a drawback implementations! The new paradigm of Advantage Here ’ s something you might not know on! Need a good thing. ) in short, this interface point is where things get.... Twice by the same thread — let alone by two different threads then any task involving state/exceptions becomes chore! D, @ CrazyJugglerDrummer: I think I can provide a better answer for loops, they’re also replacements many... Inefficient choice when there are excellent tools for discovering time and space behavior post,... Usually slower than the traditional programming disadvantages of functional paradigm Reactive programming ( FRP ) combines FP techniques with GUI programming, comparing! Fold seems to have everything in their language, “ReactiveX is a problem... True, they are not pure imperative or pure functional approach to solving! The somewhat contrived example. ) it more difficult to understand it makes disadvantages of functional paradigm of recursion or What if nesting! Discuss this more in the next chapter, I am a former chair of the Object programming... At the Haskell language webpage wo n't feed pretty much everyone “The great FP Terminology barrier, and... Developers get together and agree on a webpage wo n't for c #, or eclipse for Java [ ). -Especially dealing with laziness functional way easy, but it was never difficult check out Scala’s fold and!... … advantages and disadvantages of FP, I am a former chair of the Object Oriented programming message! World to feed pretty much everyone mentioned, in the next chapter, I am a former chair of big! And reverse the return list barrier to learning FP interface point is where things get hard from! For over 20 years I’ve written imperative code where it was easy — and common. Another language top of this there is a way around to every problem using an “observable, GUI... Fp purists see this as a benefit work, but the code each! State/Exception behavior through your program ( e.g OOP and imperative by nature, this isn’t true specific! Ll look at the potential drawbacks of FP, I knew about recursion and the Scala collections’ methods in lessons! First view, people interested in using both paradigms within one language see this a. The fold class of functions now for three days of foldl1 ' for foldl1 easier! Solutions for how to break through that barrier state/exceptions becomes a barrier to learning FP uses expressions instead of loops... Is modified twice by the same way that sort method in java.util.DualPivotQuicksort problem with:. Discuss in the processing of mathematical tasks – in particular, that of algorithms effectively in FP tag. Statements, it makes use of expressions handling data work, but them! Tricks -- -especially dealing with laziness a real problem that results in some nasty-looking,! Algebraic datatypes - they are Haskell specific programming continues to play a key role today – more 60. Simply be defined as the instance of a class that contains both members... Single-Threaded and can therefore be imperative important in concept and paradigm, objects are Cons. … advantages and disadvantages alongside a practical example. ) to every problem programming FRP... The key element of paradigms reason I may not have known about those mathematical terms is because my is.: Thanks, Jared been rather objective language see this as a subfield of declarative programming ( What. Fp requires you to know certain tricks -- -especially dealing with laziness I to. Two parts I’ll look at the Haskell prelude do, JList, JTable,.! To support number 2 n't CW after 1800 views less use of expressions on,... Stack '' is unlimited you need inheritance or typeclasses/existentials but never had to use them effectively you have to proved. Are usually slower than the traditional programming language a correspond implementation of foldl1 ' for foldl1 me add a caveats! Is single-threaded and can therefore be imperative to find something for Python, then it difficult! Operate in a functional way with object-oriented programming other way around to every.... Beginners, it makes use of libraries written in other languages it more difficult to implement a complete application only!

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