Here's a small snippet from my book Refactoring TypeScript on this topic that sums up my thoughts:
It needs to be brought up: What's better - object-oriented programming or functional programming?
For starters, most people don't understand what OOP was intended to be in the first place. Similar to how Agile today is usually misunderstood (e.g. just because you are having daily stand-ups, using story points, kanban, etc. doesn't mean you are doing Agile).
Alan Kay is considered the father of OOP, in a sense. In a certain email, he gave some frank explanations about what OOP was supposed to be.
"I thought of objects being like biological cells and/or individual computers on a network, only able to communicate with messages (so messaging came at the very beginning -- it took a while to see how to do messaging in a programming language efficiently enough to be useful)...
OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things...
But just to show how stubbornly an idea can hang on, all through the seventies and eighties, there were many people who tried to get by with "Remote Procedure Call" instead of thinking about objects and messages."
For those familiar with microservices, the actor model, and other advanced programming paradigms, your Spidey sense is tingling. These are actually more closely related to true OOP.
So, is FP better than true OOP?
I don't think so. I think they both have their merits. Languages like TypeScript are embracing both paradigms and allowing developers to use the tools and methods that work best for the given problem!
Yes, the truth is often somewhere in-between. I guess what I’m about to say isn’t a big surprise (coming from a guy who mostly writes about Buddhism), but the middle path is often the best choice.
I find that Typescript allows me to write in an FP style when I want to have data manipulation and OO when I want to encapsulate state changes. And due to it’s C styled syntax, I can wrap the pure functions in imperative code so that OO developers can contribute without feeling like they’re being pushed out of the way. It’s code that everyone can enjoy! :)
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Here's a small snippet from my book Refactoring TypeScript on this topic that sums up my thoughts:
It needs to be brought up: What's better - object-oriented programming or functional programming?
For starters, most people don't understand what OOP was intended to be in the first place. Similar to how Agile today is usually misunderstood (e.g. just because you are having daily stand-ups, using story points, kanban, etc. doesn't mean you are doing Agile).
Alan Kay is considered the father of OOP, in a sense. In a certain email, he gave some frank explanations about what OOP was supposed to be.
For those familiar with microservices, the actor model, and other advanced programming paradigms, your Spidey sense is tingling. These are actually more closely related to true OOP.
So, is FP better than true OOP?
I don't think so. I think they both have their merits. Languages like TypeScript are embracing both paradigms and allowing developers to use the tools and methods that work best for the given problem!
Yes, the truth is often somewhere in-between. I guess what I’m about to say isn’t a big surprise (coming from a guy who mostly writes about Buddhism), but the middle path is often the best choice.
I find that Typescript allows me to write in an FP style when I want to have data manipulation and OO when I want to encapsulate state changes. And due to it’s C styled syntax, I can wrap the pure functions in imperative code so that OO developers can contribute without feeling like they’re being pushed out of the way. It’s code that everyone can enjoy! :)