#programming #computing # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Functional programming #to-digest >It helps if you use a technique called functional programming. Functional programming means avoiding side effects. It’s something you’re more likely to see in research papers than commercial software, but for web-based applications it turns out to be really useful. It’s hard to write entire programs as purely functional code, but you can write substantial chunks this way. It makes those parts of your software **easier to test**, because they have no state, and that is very convenient in a situation where you are constantly making and testing small modifications. I wrote much of Viaweb’s editor in this style, and we made our scripting language, RTML, a purely functional language. >~ [[Paul Graham]] # External links