r/functionalprogramming turned 10

Last week r/functionalprogramming turned 10 years old! Time passed very quickly since I created the subreddit.

I had heard about functional programming before at university and from co-workers, but hadn't much need for it at work. But when I started working on Apache Commons Functor, I realized I needed somewhere to start collecting all the blog posts, papers, and other links I was finding on a part of the Internet I had no idea it existed before.

Apache Functor was never released after these 10 years, but luckily r/functionalprogramming gained new subscribers that started sharing interesting content. At the moment I am writing this, the subreddit has a total of 19752 users, compared with 19700 from exactly one week ago. I hope it continues to be a good place for subscribers to help each other, while also having fun, and learning more about functional programming, Haskell, Lisp, elm, JavaScript, Scala, category theory, lambda calculus, and more.

Moderating the subreddit is not very hard, but at times it can be difficult. Occasionally a new post about JavaScript, or Object-Oriented Programming vs. Functional Programming inflames the community. It is normal to have topics that are always hot topics (e.g. frequentists and bayesians in statistics), but whenever redditors forget the “ad hominem” principle, I have to step in and either ask them to calm down or, in the last case, lock the topic. Fortunately it only happened a few times.

I am looking to add more moderators to make it a fairer place (after all no place with a single moderator can be unbiased) and to increase the bus factor, reducing the risk of the subreddit becoming mod-less in case I am unavailable. Get in touch if you know of anyone interested in functional programming and building communities.

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