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Sunday, October 05, 2025
The Digital Press
All the Bits Fit to Print
Ruby
Sunday, October 05, 2025
All the Bits Fit to Print
Examining how functional programming principles reshaped frontend development and conflicted with the web platform
Hacker News
Modern frontend development has been heavily shaped by functional programming principles, leading to powerful abstractions but also a growing disconnect from the web platform’s native capabilities. This shift has introduced complexity and performance issues as developers rebuild browser features in JavaScript rather than leveraging them directly.
Why it matters: Functional programming ideals improved code predictability but caused frameworks to fight native web features, increasing complexity and reducing performance.
The big picture: The web’s inherent mutability and global scope clash with FP purity, leading to widespread reinvention of CSS, events, rendering, and routing in JavaScript.
The stakes: Over-reliance on JavaScript frameworks results in slower page loads, accessibility regressions, duplicated data fetching, and developers missing native HTML and browser APIs.
Commenters say: Opinions vary—some defend FP and React’s abstractions as practical solutions, others note new native elements like