Why is functional programming such a great fit for Compilers?

7/22/2025

Compilers essentially consiste of two operations:

• Analyzing code
• Transforming code

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that every single operation in a compiler is doing one or both of those operations.

Both of these operations are themselves comprised of:

• Recursive pattern matching and rewrites
• Structure composition, decomposition and recomposition