Don’t believe in programming gurus! Said that, let’s go to some definitions, and then, take a look at the lies they’ve been telling.
Functional programming aims to implement the λ-calculus as a programming environment.
Functional programming (and λ-calculus) is not about using functions, nor even about quitting object orientation.
λ-calculus is about first-class and higher-order functions, and everything as a function. Of course “everything as a function” is a bit dramatic for the programming context (but not impossible), however every other lambda feature is reasonable to be called functional programming.
First-class function is the one which can be used as parameter or set to a slot. First-class as in “first-class citizen”, with all rights.
Higher-order function is that which takes another as parameter, or may return one.
Besides, there are some constraints that define the functional paradigm:
And there are some optional features:
Now that we’ve made those definitions clear, let’s talk about the misconceptions spread through the programmer’s communities – mostly by their very gurus.
You’ve probably heard it.
Ruby isn’t a functional programming, just as Python and Scala are is not. Those are object-oriented imperative languages with
one or another functional feature, but not enough to be
considered even impure functional.
[update 2020-08-12]
My bad: I’ve said Scala is imperative, but it’s not. Scala is object-oriented indeed, but it’s functional too, not imperative.
[/update]
Julia is an impure functional language indeed, but with a lot of imperative features that disfigure its functional trait.
When a guru says that, you can be sure he’s bullshit.
We’ve seen above what functional programming is about.
Logic programming is to formal logic as the functional programming to λ-calculus.
The logic programming concepts are quite different from functional programming, and deserve a whole dedicated post about. Briefly, it’s about describing the facts’ domain and querying it.
Examples of logic programming languages are Prolog, Datalog, and SQL.
Erlang’s syntax is strongly inspired on Prolog’s, but even yet functional. Erlang sticks to all functional constraints and uses some logic features to provide some typing, which is a functional feature too – typed lambda, you saw it just above.
Furthermore, Erlang uses the same Prolog’s syntax for defining facts to declare function signatures – not to define facts.
So Erlang isn’t a logic programming language, but a fully functional programming one instead.
There’s so much more about functional programming, and you should get involved. I recommend taking a look at Haskell for fully funcional programming (install GHC), Standard ML for impure funcional programming (install MLton), Elm for front-end functional applet, and Scala for functional object orientation over JVM (or .NET, or Node.js).
Also in DEV Community 👩💻👨💻.
Also in Medium.
Career | Concept | Functional