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Created February 10, 2012 04:05
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Joe Armstrong on reusability in software (OO-vs-functional)
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oo-banana.md

I think the lack of reusability comes in object-oriented languages, not functional languages. Because the problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.

If you have referentially transparent code, if you have pure functions-- all the data comes in its input arguments and everything goes out and leaves no state behind-- it's incredibly reusable. You can just reuse it here, there, and everywhere.

-Joe Armstrong, Designer and implementer of the Erlang programming language

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