Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderFunctional programming means, that your program is composed out of functions. A function only depends on its input parameters and the effect of applying a function is the returned function result. By this definition, functions don't have side effects. Why do functions and functional programming matter? - Functions are a very nice abstraction. Looking at the input and output values gives you the complete information about the data flow. This makes functions very easy to reason about. - With the…
Author here. This blog post is actually kind of funny; I had a flash of clarity one afternoon that wouldn't go away so I spent 8 hours in a manic frenzy banging it out in one pass with no editing. Not how most of my writing happens (typically its a tedious slog with multiple passes of editing and refinement) Anyone who likes this article on my blog should check out this presentation on applying this philosophy to build tools https://youtu.be/j6uThGxx-18?si=ZF8yOEkd4wxlq84X…
This is the best description of data flows used in functional programming I have ever seen. Really well done.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 530
- Total comments
- 294
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-01-25 | What's Functional Programming All About? | lihaoyi | 4 | 0 |
| 2017-01-25 | What's Functional Programming All About? | lihaoyi | 10 | 1 |
| 2017-01-28 | What's Functional Programming All About? | lihaoyi | 3 | 0 |
| 2017-02-03 | What's Functional Programming All About? | deepakkarki | 4 | 1 |
| 2017-02-24 | How functional programming saves hours of debugging and ramping up to new code | gholap | 2 | 0 |
| 2017-03-09 | What's Functional Programming All About? | mooreds | 2 | 0 |
| 2017-08-31 | What's Functional Programming All About?First breakout · Best thread | punnerud | 341 | 139 |
| 2019-08-21 | What's Functional Programming All About? | escot | 2 | 0 |
| 2021-01-12 | What’s Functional Programming All About? | escot | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-09-04 | What's functional programming all about? (2017)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | Ivoah | 161 | 153 |