Saturday, April 23, 2011

Can Your Programming Language Do This?

An excellent argument for functional programming from Joel Spolsky.

I take exception in a couple of ways.  One is that, for some of the example code, it might actually become harder to read/understand as you go further into the article.  I don't think anyone would have trouble understanding the earlier versions.

Second, it's true that having map-reduce be natural to the language and, more importantly, the programming style may lend to thinking in those terms.   However, I don't think that's necessary to think of using map reduce as a solution for large scale computing.  It's possible to understand the concept without it being natural in the language.  (I explain it regularly in non-FP terms).