[brianberns]

> I think the move towards functional programming, and putting the onus on developers to do the mental elbow grease of converting what are largely macro-style tasks (do this, do that) into functional code (feed this transform into this one) has done a great disservice to software engineering, especially with respect to productivity.

I think you've got this exactly backwards. Functional programming lets you think at a higher level of abstraction (data flow) than imperative programming (control flow). The compiler then applies elbow grease to translate your high-level data flow transformations into low-level control flow constructs.

Let's translate your statement back a generation and see how it sounds: "I think the move towards structured programming, and putting the onus on developers to do the mental elbow grease of converting what are largely assembly-level tasks (branch, copy, add a value to a register) into structured code (if, while, for) has done a great disservice to software engineering, especially with respect to productivity."

Hopefully you can understand how silly that seems to a modern programmer.

[taneq]

I don't think that data flow is a higher level of abstraction to control flow. They're just different types of abstraction, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

If you only ever work on things that map well to functional programming then you'll naturally think it's superior to imperative programming. Likewise, if you only ever work on things that map well to imperative programming, then the functional programming approach seems a bit silly.

[TuringTest]

Functional code can represent an imperative program (using temporal logic or state monads), so it can be used for domains where you would use imperative code.

It will not always be easier, but it certainly provides more control over the execution flow.

[brianberns]

Implementing an algorithm in a functional language almost always requires less code than implementing the same algorithm in an imperative language. That is direct evidence that functional languages are more abstract.