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"Outperforming Imperative with Pure Functional Languages" by Richard Feldman

Strange Loop Conference · 98.3K views · 2021-10-20 · 34:55

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Overview

Richard Feldman explains how pure functional languages can match or beat imperative ones on performance. Compilers can turn immutable code into in-place mutation, avoiding naive copying. The talk draws on his work on the Roc language.

On Hacker News

Recommended as the clearest explanation of why immutable data need not be slow, and as the introduction to Roc.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Functional programmingSoftware performance & optimizationCompilers, interpreters & program analysis
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rocimmutabilitycompilersin-place mutation

What people said

greener_grass · 2025-02 · Recommendation

We already have many great GC'd functional languages at that performance level. I first learned about Roc from this talk: [VIDEO] That's a niche that is not currently filled (well, maybe MLTon) and that has me very excited! I'm sure I'm not alone here.

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greener_grass · 2024-10 · Recommendation

1. Structural sharing - most data doesn't change so you create a copy that reuses much of the original structure 2. Garbage collection and lexical scopes - you clean up memory quickly and in batch 3. Compiler optimizations - you turn functional constructs into imperative ones that reuse and mutate memory at compile-time, where it is provably safe to do so Roc Lang might interest you: [VIDEO]

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yashrk · 2023-11 · Recommendation

If you are interested, «why yet another programming language?». The unique selling point of Roc is clever optimization to convert purely functional source code to deep-imperative fast machine code, while keeping all the correctness of functional algorithms. See this video of Richard Feldman for details — «Outperforming Imperative with Pure Functional Languages»: [VIDEO] Among those clever optimizations: - static reference counting (no GC, like in Rust, but with no borrowing and borrow problems); - stack allocation of the data with no external links; - hidden («opportunistic») mutability even in the cases, where Haskell or Lisp will copy the value.

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Sources

Video by Strange Loop Conference, played through YouTube.

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