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Functional Programming Lessons Conclusion
As many others observe as well, one of the major reasons to write is to firm up ideas in one’s own head. Serializing an idea out into English words is still no guarantee one understands it deeply, but it is great progress over a very fuzzy idea that has never been fleshed out at all.
I do not like people obsessing about the micro-scale of functional programming, often to the point they actually harm their own code bases, while at the same time writing higher-level structures indistinguishable from the rest of the imperative world. Most of the time, as one puts more effort in, the benefit obtained rather smoothly increases, usually quickly at the beginning and then asymptotically approaching 100% towards the end. You are not doomed to the outer pit of Imperative Hell just because local engineering considerations preclude a pure functional language.
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