The parts of XSLT that cause me problems are the functional programming parts; not every problem is well-suited to functional programming, especially when it comes to, as in that case, parsing complex interconnected documents to find information (ETA: Particularly when that information isn’t guaranteed to be in any one particular place, and you have to conditionally check multiple locations, each of which itself may be referenced in one of multiple locations that have to be conditionally checked).
Functional programming takes a mathematical approach to problem-solving. There are some problems it is exceedingly elegant at solving. The issue is that it isn’t any more elegant than a well-written alternative in another language, and it makes that elegance mandatory, which causes severe problems when you’re dealing with an inelegant problem.
I’m not hired to solve elegant problems. I’m hired to solve the problems that companies have spent 20 million dollars to fail to solve.
The parts of XSLT that cause me problems are the functional programming parts; not every problem is well-suited to functional programming, especially when it comes to, as in that case, parsing complex interconnected documents to find information
So your example of how ‘functional programming fails’ is to use a vague personal anecdote about possibly the worst ‘functional’ language in the world, many versions of which don’t even have higher-order functions which is a basic key functional feature dating back literally to the 1960s, and of which people have published research papers just to prove it is Turing-complete?
Do you understand why no one is going to find your claim that “functional programming sucks because I once wrote a bad program in XSLT” even remotely convincing? Even if you do boast about yourself that
I’m not hired to solve elegant problems. I’m hired to solve the problems that companies have spent 20 million dollars to fail to solve.
The problem was done under an NDA, so I can’t get too specific. The shortest explanation, however, is “Parsing obfuscated document.” It was a problem which was intentionally created by somebody to be as difficult as possible to solve in a programming language.
Functional programming doesn’t suck because of that problem; it would have been difficult in ANY language. Functional programming sucks because it deliberately prevents you from doing things. As a rule, any time anybody says “You shouldn’t be doing that,” it is because they lack imagination as to why you would need to do that. Functional programming is designed around the principle that “You shouldn’t be doing that.”
I think I see the problem here.
Perlis comes to mind:
The parts of XSLT that cause me problems are the functional programming parts; not every problem is well-suited to functional programming, especially when it comes to, as in that case, parsing complex interconnected documents to find information (ETA: Particularly when that information isn’t guaranteed to be in any one particular place, and you have to conditionally check multiple locations, each of which itself may be referenced in one of multiple locations that have to be conditionally checked).
Functional programming takes a mathematical approach to problem-solving. There are some problems it is exceedingly elegant at solving. The issue is that it isn’t any more elegant than a well-written alternative in another language, and it makes that elegance mandatory, which causes severe problems when you’re dealing with an inelegant problem.
I’m not hired to solve elegant problems. I’m hired to solve the problems that companies have spent 20 million dollars to fail to solve.
So your example of how ‘functional programming fails’ is to use a vague personal anecdote about possibly the worst ‘functional’ language in the world, many versions of which don’t even have higher-order functions which is a basic key functional feature dating back literally to the 1960s, and of which people have published research papers just to prove it is Turing-complete?
Do you understand why no one is going to find your claim that “functional programming sucks because I once wrote a bad program in XSLT” even remotely convincing? Even if you do boast about yourself that
The problem was done under an NDA, so I can’t get too specific. The shortest explanation, however, is “Parsing obfuscated document.” It was a problem which was intentionally created by somebody to be as difficult as possible to solve in a programming language.
Functional programming doesn’t suck because of that problem; it would have been difficult in ANY language. Functional programming sucks because it deliberately prevents you from doing things. As a rule, any time anybody says “You shouldn’t be doing that,” it is because they lack imagination as to why you would need to do that. Functional programming is designed around the principle that “You shouldn’t be doing that.”