I hear they are good, make it easier to maintain code-bases. Most often I reach for python to get the job done. Does anyone have experiences with functional languages for larger projects?
In particular I am interested to learn more on how to handle databases, and writing to them and what patterns they come up with. Is a database handle you can write to not … basically mutable state, the arch-nemesis of functional languages?
Are functional languages only useful with an imperative shell?


A few good reasons, the first being that brand new operating systems don’t get written all that often. But even if they were, functional languages focus a lot on abstractions, making them generally higher level languages and so not fast enough to compete with C.
Having said that, Rust’s design is quite inspired by functional languages in many ways, and it is indeed being used in operating systems.