In the IT world, Functional Programming refers to a specific paradigm, where the programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. Functional Programming Languages are specifically designed to handle symbolic computation; they use conditional expressions and recursion to perform computation. Functional Programming Languages don’t support flow Controls such as loop or conditional statements; instead, they directly use the functions and functional calls. Functional Programming has many advantages: it offers bug-free codes, efficient parallel programming, concurrently running independent units, support for nested functions, and lazy evaluation. In this blog, we are going to discuss some of the most popular Functional Programming Languages in the market today. 

Elixir

Elixir is a highly dynamic functional programming language that is used for building maintainable and scalable applications. Elixir is currently developing actively, and its network is growing day by day. Some of the many benefits of Elixir include:

• Speed – tests measuring Elixir’s performance have shown the latter’s obvious superiority over other coding languages.
• Concurrency - the ability to run multiple independent processes simultaneously is beneficial and impressive. 
• Productivity – Elixir’s syntax makes it possible to write codes that are clean and easy to understand.
• Fault Tolerance – Elixir has a high tolerance to both internal and external issues. 

Erlang

The basis of the above-discussed programming languages is Erlang Virtual Machine. Erlang is a concurrent and highly productive programming language that is highly reliable and genuinely battle-proven. This old, general-purpose language has withstood the test of time for a reason; it has many incredible benefits:

• Scalability – Erlang’s processes make it possible to quickly scale systems by adding more machines and cores to existing machines. 
• Reliability – Due to Erlang’s unique approach to fault-tolerance, lightweight processes can be quickly restarted, which helps to build self-healing systems. 
• High Concurrency – BEAM – Erlang Virtual Machine uses lightweight threads of execution, which are isolated and communicate through messages. 

Haskell

Next up, we have Haskell – an excellent industrial language with a highly expressive and concise syntax. It is great for quick prototyping and also offers advanced type safety. The benefits of Haskell are as follows:

• A robust type system – provides opportunities for easy refactoring. 
• Parallel Computing – For complex data structures, Haskell’s purely functional nature allows the processing of large computations simultaneously, which is fast and efficient. 
• Handy in data-intensive industries – an expressive type system and abstractions simplify extensive data infrastructure and make the code reusable. 

Clojure

Clojure is another excellent functional programming language that has withstood the test of time. It offers many useful modern features, including software transactional memory, persistent immutable data structures, strong JVM integration, and more. Some of the benefits of using Clojure include:

• Immutable Data Structures – this is useful in writing multithreaded applications as it negates the whole class of bugs related to the synchronization of changing variables.
• Extensibility – Clojure relies on composition as its extension mechanism; it enables the communication between concurrent sequential processes. 
• Multi-purpose solution – You can use Clojure for JVM integration, NET implementation, and JavaScript implementation.

Scala

The final functional programming language we have on our list is Scala. Scala provides code complexity optimization and concise notation. Some of its advantages are the following:

• Java Compatibility and Interoperability allows developers to leverage the benefits of JVM and keep their Java libraries. 
• Advanced Functional Features – string comparison advancements, pattern matching, and mixins which incorporate functions in class definitions. 

So, above, we have discussed some of the best functional programming languages that developers opt for today. Remember always to research the details about programming languages when contemplating whether or not to use them in your upcoming project. Don’t be hesitant to try out many different ones to find your perfect match. Good Luck!