[CJefferson]

That day will come, for many of us, when a large AAA game, web browser, or usable OS is written in a FP language.

And I realise that is an unfair target, but there is very little user facing FP software. The only one I can think of I have used is xmonad, which is both hard to use and fairly buggy

[pjmlp]

You mean like Crash Bandicoot, Abuse, Jak and Daxter?

Or maybe Genera.

Or maybe Remote Agent software used by Nasa Deep Space 1?

Or eventually the train control systems running on software from Siscog?

[alayne]

You can do functional programming in Lisp, but even the wiki page for GOAL says "GOAL encourages an imperative programming style". Not to mention most Lisp data structures being mutable if we're talking purely functional.

[pjmlp]

I have a problem with modern notions of purely functional.

My first functional programming language was Caml Light, back in 1996. Followed by Prolog and eventually Lisp.

All alongside traditional lambda calculus and logic proofs, with ocasional references to a programming language called Mirada.

So for me, Lisp is functional programming and I don't buy into this modern notion that only Haskell is the poster child of FP.

[Retra]

I looks like alayne is using 'purely functional' to mean Pure + Functional, but you are using it to mean Everything is an Expression / First-class functions, etc.. The functional paradigm.

Lisp is definitely a functional language. It's just not as pure as Haskell, which is the poster child for Maximally Pure FP, if not for the functional style.

[pjmlp]

Hence why I made the reference to Miranda.

We were already doing functional programming while Haskell was still using diapers.

[Retra]

Well, yes. Haskell is heavily inspired by Miranda. Haskell was just managed in a way that allowed it to become very popular.

[MichaelGG]

Probably more like when Mozilla ships a browser written in Rust. Even though Rust handles low-level so well, it heavily uses FP concepts.

Meanwhile, this is good news for people creating startups or otherwise being competitive. Having advanced programming languages where your competition is mired down having to churn out 10x more code, is certainly a benefit. Although not every (many?) business really comes down to technical ability.

[pjmlp]

> Probably more like when Mozilla ships a browser written in Rust.

Actually I would rather see this happening, than the continuous effort on Firefox OS.

[saryant]

> You mean like Crash Bandicoot, Abuse, Jak and Daxter?

Huh, TIL:

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

[CJefferson]

While Crash Bandicoot used LISP (which I wouldn't call FP, although definitions vary), it was only for a small part of the code (the AI), nowhere near all the game was written in lisp.

[Someone]

Not there at all (slower than the Pascal equivalent, limited to fairly simple games, and uses some C), but nevertheless interesting is http://cleangl.sourceforge.net/thesis/CGL.pdf, which describes a game library in Concurrent Clean.

(reading http://clean.cs.ru.nl and looking at the archives of the mailing list may give the impression the project died at the end of 2011, but http://clean.cs.ru.nl/Download_Clean has binaries from November 2014)

[codygman]

Xmonad is buggy? I've been using it for 4 years and never had a problem. I actually also use it on multiple displays.

[codygman]

Since I use Xmonad as my window manager, I'm rather invested in you elaborating on Xmonad being "fairly buggy". Should I worry about my data?

[CJefferson]

I found that several applications would cause it to go crazy (lock up), including many Java applications and open office. Further, if you started adding many extensions, they would cause crashes (I'm sure it's because they were badly written, but I thought the whole point of haskell was no crashes).

So, if you find nowadays Java apps and openoffice work fine (or, you don't use them), and you are careful about which extensions you add, then you will probably be fine.

[codygman]

Oh! I know what you are talking about and remember the issue. You had/have to add `setWMName "LG3D"' to the configuration since versions older than Java 7 don't include Xmonad on their hardcoded list of suppported window managers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like that one was Xmonad's fault.

Interesting, to be honest I don't really use any extensions. I do use Java apps and openoffice these days and they work fine.

Thanks for your response! I'll have to try adding some extensions and see what happens.