Why are functional languages considered a boon for multi threaded environments?

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Functional programming and multicore architecture

I hear a lot about functional languages, and how they scale well because there is no state around a function; and therefore that function can be massively parallelized.

However, this makes little sense to me because almost all real-world practical programs need/have state to take care of. I also find it interesting that most major scaling libraries, i.e. MapReduce, are typically written in imperative languages like C or C++.

I'd like to hear from the functional camp where this hype I'm hearing is coming from....

Answer 1

Functional languages such as Haskell, Scheme and others have what are called "pure functions". A pure function is a function with no side effects. It doesn't modify any other state in the program. This is by definition threadsafe.

Of course you can write pure functions in imperative languages. You also find multi-paradigm languages like Python, Ruby and even C# where you can do imperative programming, functional programming or both.

But the point of Haskell (etc) is that you can't write a non-pure function. Well that's not strictly true but it's mostly true.

Similarly, many imperative languages have immutable objects for much the same reason. An immutable object is one whose state doesn't change once created. Again by definition an immutable object is threadsafe.

Answer 2

You're talking about two different things and don't realize it.

Yes, most real-world programs have state somewhere, but if you want to do multithreading, that state should not be everywhere, and in fact, the fewer places it's in, the better. In functional programs, the default is not to have state, and you can introduce state exactly where you need it and nowhere else. Those parts that are dealing with state will not be as easily multithreaded, but since all the rest of your program is free of side-effects and thus it doesn't matter what order those parts are executed in, it removes a huge barrier to parallelization.

Answer 3

Higher order functions. Consider a simple reduction operation, summing the elements of an array. In an imperative language, programmers typically write themselves a loop and perform reductions one element at a time.

But that code isn't easy to make multi-threaded. When you write a loop you're assuming an order of operations and you have to spell out how to get from one element to the next. You'd really like to just say "sum the array" and have the compiler, or runtime, or whatever, make the decision about how to work through the array, dividing up the task as necessary between multiple cores, and combining those results together. So instead of writing a loop, with some addition code embedded inside it, an alternative is to pass something representing "addition" into a function that can do the divvying. As soon as you do that, you're writing functionally. You're passing a function (addition) into another function (the reducer). If you write this way then it not only makes more readable code, but when you change architecture, or want to write for heterogeneous architecture, you don't have to change the summer, just the reducer. In practice you might have many different algorithms that all share one reducer so this is a big payoff.

This is just a simple example. You may want to build on this. Functions to apply other functions on 2D arrays, functions to apply functions to tree structures, functions to combine functions to apply functions (eg. if you have a hierarchical structure with trees above and arrays below) and so on.

Answer 4

However, this makes little sense to me because almost all real-world practical programs need/have state to take care of.

You'd be surprised! Yes, all programs need some state (I/O in particular) but often you don't need much more. Just because most programs have heaps of state doesn't mean they need it.

Programming in a functional language encourages you to use less state, and thus your programs become easier to parallelise.

Many functional languages are "impure" which means they allow some state. Haskell doesn't, but Haskell has monads which basically let you get something from nothing: you get state using stateless constructs. Monads are a bit fiddly to work with which is why Haskell gives you a strong incentive to restrict state to as small a part of your program as possible.

I also find it interesting that most major scaling libraries, i.e. MapReduce, are typically written in imperative languages like C or C++.

Programming concurrent applications is "hard" in C/C++. That's why it's best to do all the dangerous stuff in a library which is heavily tested and inspected. But you still get the flexibility and performance of C/C++.

Answer 5

It's important to add one word: "there's no shared state".

Any meaningful program (in any language) changes the state of the world. But (some) functional languages make it impossible to access the same resource from multiple threads simultaneously. The absence of shared state makes multithreading safe.