Strange Loop Conference | "Outperforming Imperative with Pure Functional Languages" by Richard Feldman @StrangeLoopConf | Uploaded October 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
Like many, I once thought that functional programming makes programs easier to maintain, but slower to run. After all, that had been my experience; when I wrote JavaScript in a functional style, my code got easier to maintain - but it no longer ran as fast.

Once I got deeper into functional languages, including pure functional ones, I was surprised to discover that they could actually outperform imperative languages - not just in tasks generally considered "well-suited" to functional programming, but sometimes even in cases considered well-suited for imperative programming!

This talk examines performance from the network level all the way down to individual CPU instructions to show how and when pure functional programming languages can outperform their imperative counterparts. Come see just how fast functional programming can be!

Richard Feldman
NoRedInk
@rtfeldman

Richard Feldman is a software engineer at NoRedInk and a well-known member of the Elm community.

Recorded at Strange Loop 2021
thestrangeloop.com