Introduction
Programming and program development has taken centre stage in the computer world and every day a news item is posted on a new development that has occurred within this field. This paper will discuss one such article as well as its contents that are related to computer programming and development. The article is entitled “Code Watch: Functional programming’s smugness problem.” The article speaks about functional programming as the next generation means of programming. It appraises functional programmer against mainstream traditional programmers and their programming techniques. It advocates for the adaptation of functional programming by other mainstream traditional programmers by clearly stating the advantages that lie in functional programming. The article is written by an avid columnist as well as a contributing editor to the SDTimes website, a website that is focused on software development and news concerning new programs introduced into the market. The article is written by Larry O’Brien. Larry O’Brien is a prolific contributor as well as editor. He is currently the head of Faster Programmers LL. This is a consulting company that focuses on production of high performance software products. The write himself also has vast knowledge in programming as well as in software architecture. He especially focuses on programming language design, high performance computing as well as concurrency. He has previously worked as the Product Review Editor of the following magazines; AI Expert and Computer Language magazines, both of which are magazines that focus on computer software development and programming. He has also been appointed as the Vice President of R&D at a company called iMind Education Systems as well as at 10th Dimension.
Major ideas of the article
The article is an expression of the feelings of an ardent programmer to the idea of sticking to mainstream programming as opposed to changing to functional programming, which the writer feels to be more pertinent as well as the panacea to mainstream programming problems. The writer states that functional programmers have been able to apply major advances in type theory as compared to the previous smugness of LISP in trying to generate Haskell Prick. The writer is also explicit on the advocacy by LISP on prudent avoidance by students of programming techniques such as Scheme and LISP. He confidently expounds on the fact that the students who had previously been exposed to these mainstream programming techniques have confidently shifted base to functional programming technique. This he claims is due to the fact that functional programming advocates for the non-acknowledgement of programmers who do not understand the concept behind functional programming. The writer marvels at the fact that there are a lot of skeptics against functional programming despite the merits of functional being clear. He further adds that the benefits of functional programming are being utilized presently within mainstream programming. He emphasizes the fact that efficient programmers are able to comprehend the fact that the immutable data is preferred against data that is mutable. This is due to the fact that functions that constantly return the same value for similar input values are normally flexible and quite workable. This is in contrast with functions whose functionality is dependent on a given state that is not visible as well as the fact that modularity is the best means of constructing complex programs.
The writer is insistent on the fact that efficient programmers should be aware that being conservative on one single programming technique is overly devotive. He insists that no one single programming paradigm can adequately provide the ultimate performance as well meet the complex requirements of the domain. He gives a case study in which a particular software feature had to be done away with due to the fact that it required a runtime initialization.
The writer is of the opinion that the reason for any programmer to be ardent to a particular programming technique, resistive of change could be due to the magnitude of benefits that the particular technique offers. The writer concludes that there has been insistence on the high levels of productivity of both LISP and Haskell users. He puts this to the scale by an empirical study conducted by Pankratius, Schmidt and Garreton which in essence put into comparison Scala and Java and no such overwhelming productivity was achieved. This has led the writer to strongly advice the adherents to consider their stand and opt for new functional programming techniques.
Summary
The article has proven useful as it enlightens on programming trends and techniques. Being a widely knowledgeable programmer with vast experience in programming techniques, the writer gives his candid take on the path and future of programming and program development, giving an insight into why holding on to the mainstream trends will tend to hld back and prove fatal to future programmers.The article is generally about functional programming and its place in program development. The article hinges its argument on the near obsolescence of mainstream programming techniques as well as mainstream programmers who do not accept functional programming. The article gives the pros of functional programming while weighing it against conventional programming techniques.
WORKS CITED
Larry O’Brien. “Code Watch: Functional programming's smugness problem.”SDTimes(April 16,2012). Online. Internet. Accessed on 14th May 2012. Available at: http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=36534&page=1
Larry O’Brien. “About Larry.”SDTimes. Online. Internet. Accessed on 14th May 2012. Available at: http://www.sdtimes.com/about/LarryOBrien
