Pinderkent

I read an article today suggesting that functional programming hasn't caught on widely because most developers today haven't been convinced that it is necessary. I'm not sure that's completely correct. Those who are truly "in the know" will have been at least investigating functional programming for some time now. The rest can merely be considered stragglers, who don't yet realize that they currently do have, or will have, a need for functional programming in the near future.

Although it was clear several years ago, we can now say with almost complete certainty now that we will soon be seeing consumer-grade PCs with 32 or more logical processors. Intel's Core i7 has recently brought us part of the way there. At the higher end, Sun's UltraSPARC T2, for instance, offers 8 cores for 64 threads of execution. The trend is obviously towards processors offering multiple cores, each of which may offer multiple threads of execution. And today's mainstream programming languages just don't take advantage of such environments too well.

Some industries have dealt with these issues already. That's why Erlang has been around for over 20 years now. Anyone who has worked on telecom systems or even just worked with Erlang knows the benefits that its concurrency model brings. These days, with the advent of consumer-grade multicore CPUs, such benefits are applicable even when using the low-end systems. In fact, to make the most of today's and tomorrow's CPUs, we will need to develop our software to be more concurrent.

To do this effectively, we likely will need to make use of at least some of the techniques pioneered by the functional programming community. Immutability is perhaps the most important and useful technique when writing concurrent software. Strong, static typing as offered by languages like Haskell and Standard ML is also very useful. Well-integrated support for writing concurrent applications, such as that offered by Erlang, is another major benefit.

However, we likely won't see the development community at large using Haskell, ML or Erlang any time soon. What we'll probably see first is a move towards hybrid or multi-paradigm languages. Clojure and Scala are two of the most familiar at this point. Both target the Java platform, which makes them appealing to existing Java users.

Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft may very well be the ones who bring functional programming to the mainstream, through their F# language that is to be included as part of Visual Studio 2010. Functional programming will quickly be made easily accessible to a large number of application developers, at a critical time when many will likely be looking for ways to better leverage systems with many logical processors.

Unfortunately, Sun seems content with spinning their wheels with Java and worse, JavaFX Script. Given Sun's long history providing back-end hardware and software, especially hardware that offers many threads of execution, it's sort of surprising that they aren't giving more support to languages like Clojure and Scala. These are the sort of languages that give current JVM users the boost they need to remain or even become competitive.

We're starting to see a variety of factors come together now that will make functional programming techniques far more useful to the mainstream software developer. Multicore CPUs are now readily available, including in low-end consumer-grade desktops and laptops. This will start increasing the demand for efficient, scalable and practical methods of making use of these resources. A variety of open source functional languages, like Haskell, Erlang, Scala and Clojure, have shown that they're willing to help meet these demands. Microsoft is going with F#. The need to use functional techniques combined with readily-available language implementations will allow for this flourishing to occur.

Today I perused an article suggesting that Microsoft is a "dying giant". While that article is correct to point out that we are seeing things change for Microsoft, I don't think the article's interpretation was correct. They're adapting to changing circumstances, and are doing a better job than many of their competitors.

Yes, they have or will be making some significant layoffs. That's often necessary during a time of change. Efficiency and productivity has become a necessity, and those who don't offer one or both must go.

But unlike many of their competitors, especially Sun, Microsoft has potential. They're going in the right direction where it matters. One such example is F#. With virtually every PC sold these days having CPUs with two or more cores, software will need to start making better use of such resources. One of the most effective ways of doing this is through the techniques of functional programming. With the release of Visual Studio 2010, which will include support for F#, Microsoft will bring functional programming to the masses.

Sun has failed miserably in this respect. Considering the hardware they offer, they should have been at the forefront of delivering what it takes to write effective software that runs on systems with 32 or more processing units. After all, that is what we'll see in typical desktops in a few years, if not sooner.

Java has stagnated, and in many ways is becoming irrelevant in the coming software development world. While Java did help bring multithreaded programming to a wider audience, its techniques are no longer suitable. We, as developers, need functional programming. So Sun should probably have put much more emphasis on programming languages that target the JVM like Scala and Clojure, rather than Java. They do offer the functional programming capabilities that we're really beginning to need these days, and that we'll find crucial in the very near future.

Although I have used Sun's hardware and software for years, and have very much enjoyed using them, I see Microsoft as bringing more innovation and practicality to developers than Sun is these days. So although Microsoft is falling on some troubling times these days, as most companies and individuals are, they have a better future ahead of them. They're adapting during these crucial times, and will be much better prepared to face the computers we will be using shortly.