Specifically, I’m interested in BEAM, but I’m not sure if I should go for Elixir or Gleam. What seems cool about Gleam is that it has static typing.

I have no experience with functional programming at all btw

  • NostraDavid@programming.dev
    20·
    8 个月前

    Haskell:

    https://learnyouahaskell.com/introduction

    It’s been a while since writing some (2018), but the concepts you learn from Haskell are great (though I still can’t explain Monads, even if my life depended on it) and can be applied in other languages.

    Anyway, I can’t speak to BEAM, but Haskell is very typeful, it teaches you currying, very great language, awful tooling (but that was ~10 years ago, so I hope things have improved since).

    • Corbin@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      8 个月前

      Haskell isn’t the best venue for learning currying, monads, or other category-theoretic concepts because Hask is not a category. Additionally, the community carries lots of incorrect and harmful memes. OCaml is a better choice; its types don’t yield a category, but ML-style modules certainly do!

      @thingsiplay@beehaw.org and @Kache@lemmy.zip are oversimplifying; a monad is a kind of algebra carried by some endofunctor. All endofunctors are chainable and have return values; what distinguishes a monad is a particular signature along with some algebraic laws that allow for refactoring inside of monad operations. Languages like Haskell don’t have algebraic laws; for a Haskell-like example of such laws, check out 1lab’s Cat.Diagram.Monad in Agda.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      2·
      8 个月前

      When I read about Monads, it looks like to me like generic Rust struct with a generic trait and a (more complex) result as a return value. I have no idea if this is what a Monad basically is or not. For context, I never learned Haskell properly (just tried hello world and read a few topics).

      • bitcrafter@programming.dev
        6·
        8 个月前

        You should think of Monad as basically giving you a way to provide your own implementation of the semicolon operator so that you can dictate what it means to sequence computations of a given type.

        • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
          3·
          8 个月前

          I think the mistake I do (and many others) is trying to compare existing mechanisms from other languages, without the full picture around that mechanic. Every time I think to understand what a Monad is, its wrong. :D Guess I have to dive deeper to understand what that actually means, not just as an explanation. Just out of curiosity.

  • AsimovIV@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    8 个月前

    Elixir is quite amazing to write and read, the major libraries (Pheonix, Ecto, etc.) have excellent documentation, the tools are generally excellent and it is built on to BEAM which is amazing. But it is a dynamically typed language with all the pain that can incur. Of course, there are tools (such as Dialyzer) to give some amount of static type checking but they were not very good when I tried them some years ago. Using things that need mutation can also be a pain. Programming Elixir 1.6 Functional |> Concurrent |> Pragmatic |> Fun was the book I used to learn functional programming and Elixir and it served me well.

    There are other good languages you can look into such as Ocaml (that has good free resources for new programmers) and Racket with the amazing free course you can find on OSSU.

  • Life is Tetris@leminal.space
    4·
    8 个月前

    My ₹1. It may depend on what you plan to write in it (for fun). The BEAM sounds great for long-running processes, but not as much for point tools; Erlang and co supposedly run slower than Python, which isn’t fast either.

    My other ₹ ;-) if you stick to the BEAM: OCaml sort of runs on it, as there is the Caramel project to replicate it (https://caramel.run/). One of the Erlang creators also ported Prolog to the BEAM (erlog), as well as Lua (erlua) and Lisp (LFE). Elixir is probably great, as it is inspired by Ruby (I found Ruby very pleasant, other languages have so much semantic noise).

    Freebie! The BEAM inspired an inspirational design for parallel programming, the Pony language. I am somewhat sad development slowed down, it is a Rust killer.

  • gedhrel@lemmy.world
    8·
    8 个月前

    I’d go with Erlang over elixir, but it sounds like you already have an interest in gleam.

    FWIW: just pick one and get started. There are some major axes to consider: pure versus impure, lazy versus strict, static versus dynamic typing, but to kick off if you’ve done no FP before it’s probably better to just go for it.

    There are some really intriguing “next steps”: SICP, the ML module system, the Haskell ecosystem, the OTP approach to state, but to begin with it’s just worth getting used to some basics.

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    4·
    8 个月前

    I think it doesn’t matter in what language you start, as long as it is the paradigm you are learning. You can still pick and choose the language later. Maybe start with a pure functional language, just to learn its concepts. Haskell comes to mind, but it kind of is not the best usable language in every day programming; its more academical nature in my opinion. I personally find Closure also interesting, but I’m not the biggest Java fan at all. At least the language is for practical usage.

  • darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    14·
    8 个月前

    “Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.” — Eric S. Raymond, How to Become a Hacker

  • cockmushroom@reddthat.com
    1·
    8 个月前

    I’ve only used one, and I’m only mentioning it since nobody else has, but I recommend Lean; moreso as a second functional language if you want to build stuff as opposed to just learn the paradigm. It’s mostly used in maths because it supports dependent types, but it was fine for writing simple scripts, and it can be easily compiled to binary formats. I don’t like the package management system and toolchain complexity, but most languages kinda suck at that, imo.

  • yaroto98@lemmy.world
    2·
    8 个月前

    I love functional programming and hate object oriented. It’s just how my brain thinks, I can and regularly do OOP, but I have to force myself to do it. Why not python? You can do BEAM in python, it’s pretty easy to learn, and it’s incredibly versatile, and you can program functionally in it too.

    • azolus@slrpnk.netEnglish
      21·
      8 个月前

      Python has OOP but basically no ergonomic support for FP? It doesn’t even support tail recursion or currying, lambdas are very limited and there is no nice way to compose functions. Most of the python ecosystem heavily relies on OOP and in many cases global state. Not hating on python but even compared to other mixed paradigm languages like javascript it’s on the less-functional side of things.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    61·
    8 个月前

    I assume this suggestion will get me torched for reasons I don’t understand, but why not a multi-paradigm language like JavaScript/Typescript, or C#?

    • ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev
      31·
      8 个月前

      I feel like this is the way. It ensures you get exposed to multiple paradigms and can help you easily switch to a language that’s more invested in one paradigm.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    8 个月前

    Clojure always seems to be more popular than I expect it to be. Though I have no experience with it myself. It benefits from access to the JVM ecosystem as well I believe.

    • brian@programming.dev
      4·
      8 个月前

      I love clj. in general it takes more of a pragmatic approach to functional programming than others. you get most of the purity for way less effort. same with specs over proper static types. it just ends up being a very enjoyable and productive language

  • vane@lemmy.world
    23·
    8 个月前

    Erlang https://learnyousomeerlang.com/ If you know golang and recurrence it should be easy, google basically stole channels from Erlang and syntax from Swift. Like everything else, they just stealing stuff and claiming they’re great. Fucking rich script kiddies.