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How useful are functional programming languages? (mander.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by partner_boat_slug@mander.xyz to c/programming@programming.dev
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I hear they are good, make it easier to maintain code-bases. Most often I reach for python to get the job done. Does anyone have experiences with functional languages for larger projects?

In particular I am interested to learn more on how to handle databases, and writing to them and what patterns they come up with. Is a database handle you can write to not ... basically mutable state, the arch-nemesis of functional languages?

Are functional languages only useful with an imperative shell?

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[-] masterspace@lemmy.ca 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Most major languages these days are multi-paradigm languages that can do procedural, functional, or object oriented coding.

C#, Kotlin, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Python, Swift, etc all fall into this bucket.

Java has made a lot of efforts to support functional programming, but it's still not first class.

I would argue that these languages adopting functional coding as a first class citizen has made dedicated functional languages somewhat more obsolete, but they also paved the way and set the standards for the general languages that came after.

On the web side of things, the most popular JavaScript / TypeScript frameworks these days are often fundamentally functional though, from React on the front-end to Express on the back end.

this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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