Should I pick up a functional programming language?

Question

I have recently been more concerned about the way I write my code. After reading a few books on design patterns (and overzealous implementation of them, I'm sure) I have shifted my thinking greatly toward encapsulating that which change. I tend to notice that I write less interfaces and more method-oriented code, where I love to spruce life into old classes with predicates, actions and other delegate tasks. I tend to think that it's often the actions that change, so I encapsulate those. I even often, although not always, break down interfaces to a single method, and then I prefer to use a delegate for the task instead of forcing client code to create a new class.

So I guess it then hit me. Should I be doing functional programming instead?
Edit: I may have a misconception about functional programming.

Currently my language of choice is C#, and I come from a C++ background. I work as a game developer but I am currently unemployed.

I have a great passion for architecture. My virtues are clean, flexible, reusable and maintainable code. I don't know if I have been poisoned by these ways or if it is for the better. Am I having a refactoring fever or should I move on? I understand this might be a question about "use the right tool for the job", but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Should I pick up a functional language? One of my fear factors is to leave the comfort of Visual Studio.

Answer 1

YES

Learning new stuff should be fun. And learning a new way to program should make you a better programmer. Check one of Haskell or Erlang, both are functional but they are very different. If you pick Haskell go find a few talks by "Simon Payton Jones" on youtube or podcasts. The guy is a great speaker.

Answer 2

Holy * * * *. There is no silver bullet. Step down. Relax, take a deep breath.

Just because you have a tool in your toolbox, it doesn't mean you are bound to use it. Concentrate on the task at hand, i.e. writing a program that works, and refactor when code smells bad. Don't encapsulate and abstract every little detail just because it might change some day in the future. IMO it's really much better to start straight forward, KISS & YAGNI, and react to changing requirements when they actually change.

I don't think anyone here can tell you whether or not a functional language is better suited for your needs. Because you didn't tell us what it is that you are working on.

Answer 3

You can pick up F#. It is .NET functional language, which will allow you to use Visual Studio and reuse a lot of your .NET knowledge. It's assemblies of course integrate with C# assemblies seamlessly (allowing you to easily combine C#, C++/CLI and F# in one project). F# support comes with VS Pro or better, I'm not sure whether it is enabled by default though.

Answer 4

IMO, it's well worth trying out a functional language. Even if you never use it directly in a released product, learning it will almost certainly help give a somewhat different outlook/viewpoint on programming. Even if you end up continuing to do all your "real" coding in C#, chances are pretty fair that it'll help you improve the code you do write in C#.

As others have mentioned, the obvious choice for somebody accustomed to Visual Studio is F#, which is basically an Ocaml/Caml/ML derivative. IMO, that was a good choice on the part of Microsoft for introducing people to functional programming -- it's a full-fledged functional language, but doesn't have nearly as foreign a syntax as some do (e.g., while Lisp-based languages do have real advantages, beginners almost always find it difficult to read).

Answer 5

Yes, you should.

If you choose a pure one, like Haskell, you'll learn not only a new language, but a new way of thinking. This can help you later in your proceural/OO work, too.

F#, on the other hand, is not pure, and so you can easily miss what is important in functional programming. Yóu can, so to speak, continue writing procedural programs that mutate a variable here, perform some side effects there, just in F# syntax.

Answer 6

If you are already using c# you don't need a new language - with the combination of extension methods, lambdas and the generic Func/Action types it is fairly easy to write functional code in C# - that way you can use a functional style in the algorithms where it makes most sense without needing to change the entire application.