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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Depends on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go :p

    • creating a new variable that contains the updated value
    • recursion (e.g. it’s not possible to make a loop that increments i by 1, but it is possible to turn that loop into a function which calls itself with i+1 as argument)
    • avoiding typical types of operations that would update variable values. For example instead of a for loop that updates every element of a list, a functional programmer will use the map function, which takes a list and a function to apply to each element of that list to create an updated list. There’s several more of these very typical functions that are very powerful once you get used to using them.
    • monads (I’m not even gonna try to explain them as I hardly grasp them myself)


  • In functional programming, everything is seen as a mathematical function, which means for a given input there is a given output and there can be no side effects. Changing a variable’s value is considered a side effect and is thus not possible in pure functional programming. To work around this, you typically see a lot of recursive and higher order functions.

    Declaring all values as const values is something you would do if you’re a diehard functional programmer, as you won’t mutate any values anyway.












    1. several languages that are still in use have eager evaluation.

    2. I’m a dumb programmer. The more I need to keep implicit behaviour in mind, the higher the probability I’m writing bugs. Short circuit evaluation is an optimization technique IMO and shouldn’t be relied upon for control flow.

    3. The aggressive tone you’re using is completely unnecessary and immature, so I’ll refrain from responding any further. Have a nice day.