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Scala provides immutable collections, such as Set, List, Map. I understand that the immutability has advantages in concurrent programs. However what are exactly the advantages of the immutability in regular data processing?
What if I enumerate subsets, permutations and combinations for example? Does the immutable collections have any advantage here?
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Immutable objects offer a number of advantages for building reliable applications. As we don't need to write defensive or protective code to keep application state consistent, our code can be simpler, more concise, and less error-prone than when we define mutable objects.
Immutable classes offer a number of advantages. First, a method cannot alter an immutable object in an unexpected way. Because a method cannot leave the object in some unexpected state, you avoid a number of bugs. Second, an immutable object is intrinsically thread safe.
The common use case for the immutable methods is a collection that is initialized from known values, and that never changes. Also consider using these methods if your data changes infrequently. For optimal performance, the immutable collections store a data set that never changes.
Why care about Immutables ? Improves the Exactness and simplicity of the whole code, as it provides an ease to the coder to pass around the object in the program without any fear as it never seems to be ever modified. whereas the mutable is much harder to reason about.
What are exactly the advantages of the immutability in regular data processing?
Generally speaking, immutable objects are easier/simpler to reason about.
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It does. Since you're enumerating on a collection, presumably you'd want to be certain that elements are not inadvertently added or removed while you're enumerating.
Immutability is very much a paradigm in functional programming. Making collections immutable allows one to think of them much like primitive data types (i.e. modifying a collection or any other object results in creating a different object just as adding 2 to 3 doesn't modify 3, but creates 5)
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