Functional languages are the current of programming. If you agree on a combination of the following few things as being what you mean when you say “functional programming”:
Garbage-collected
Some language support for immutability
Some language support for purity
Some language support for lazy evaluation
Good language support for first-class functions
Some libraries with functional data structures and algorithms
then most of the languages people use—C++ (C++11 at least, now that it has anonymous functions), Javascript, C#, Python, Ruby, any Lisp, Perl—support functional programming to a reasonable degree, with the notable exception of Java. (But there are lots of other cool new JVM languages like Scala, Duby and Clojure.)
The same languages often support imperative programming too, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug. There will always be some hobbyists who just want to hack together something without learning very much about programming.
I guess a better question is maybe “is functional programming the future of programmers?” In which case I think the answer is yes; it seems like FP is getting more and more mindshare among good programmers and in college curricula.
Functional languages are the current of programming. If you agree on a combination of the following few things as being what you mean when you say “functional programming”:
Garbage-collected
Some language support for immutability
Some language support for purity
Some language support for lazy evaluation
Good language support for first-class functions
Some libraries with functional data structures and algorithms
then most of the languages people use—C++ (C++11 at least, now that it has anonymous functions), Javascript, C#, Python, Ruby, any Lisp, Perl—support functional programming to a reasonable degree, with the notable exception of Java. (But there are lots of other cool new JVM languages like Scala, Duby and Clojure.)
The same languages often support imperative programming too, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug. There will always be some hobbyists who just want to hack together something without learning very much about programming.
I guess a better question is maybe “is functional programming the future of programmers?” In which case I think the answer is yes; it seems like FP is getting more and more mindshare among good programmers and in college curricula.