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Possible Duplicate:
Functional Programming in Commercial Software
Which problems domains are more suited to functional programming solutions

I just wonder where do functional programming languages are used? Might be some good examples? Like rocket science or telecommunications?

Community
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Jevgeni Smirnov
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    See also [Non-OOP languages advantages and good uses](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125649/non-oop-languages-advantages-and-good-uses) and [For what common problems is functional programming not a good fit?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10865/for-what-common-problems-is-functional-programming-not-a-good-fit) – Péter Török May 04 '12 at 11:18
  • In your spreadsheet application, for example. Or in your XSLT processor. Or in your C++ templates. – SK-logic May 04 '12 at 11:41

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Well, here's a list of projects using Erlang:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_%28programming_language%29#Projects%5Fusing%5FErlang

The world doesn't revolve around building apps for tablets and mobile phones ;)

Usually functional languages are used when there is a need for a very high degree of abstraction, parallelism and scalability. This doesn't mean you cannot write code with these properties using any other language (non-functional), but the absence of side-effects on a purely functional language helps in these scenarios.

Erlang is a great example of this, since it was built from scratch to address problems that were "embarrassingly parelizable".

Also, even a language like Javascript can be used in a purely functional form, although it does let you mess up that model quite badly.

There is also Scala, that lets you program in a mix between functional (the preferred way), and procedural style. Scala is used, for instance, on the Twitter middleware layer to handle the absurd level of concurrency that they deal with.

pcalcao
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  • The world doesn't revolve around building apps for tablets and mobile phones - yea, that's why I am asking :) – Jevgeni Smirnov May 04 '12 at 11:49
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    My personal favorite usage of Functional languages is simply to force you to think in another paradigm. I usually code in Java and Python, but I like playing around with Erlang and Scala a lot. It helps you look at problems in a new way, even in other languages. – pcalcao May 04 '12 at 11:59
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  • Jane Street uses OCaml for trading.

  • Since the functional programming language ML was created for theorm proving: automated theorm proving and proof assistants

  • While it is not required, it is common to find AI programs written in functional langauges.

  • Writing games for the XBOX.

Glorfindel
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Guy Coder
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