Functions vs OOP

[Steven D'Aprano]

tinnews at isbd.co.uk wrote:

> I think there may be another issue here.  If someone says "functional
> programming" to me then I would generally assume that they *do* mean
> "programming using functions".  

Strictly speaking you are correct, "functional programming" does
mean "programming using functions", the usual name for which is "procedural
programming". But it means more than that: functions in the sense of
mathematical functions, not merely sub-routines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming

Merely using functions is not the same as functional programming.

> While your distinction of the two may 
> be strictly correct I don't think it's the generally accepted meaning.

On the contrary, "functional programming" specifically refers to languages
derived from, based on, or at least inspired by, the ideas of Alonzo
Church's lambda calculus. It should be understood as somewhat in opposition
to the idea of imperative programming, where the programmer gives
instructions for changing program state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_paradigm

In practice, there are degrees of purity: strictly speaking, a purely
functional language would be impractical, because it would have no I/O and
therefore not be very useful. But generally, functional programming
implies:

- all coding is done using functions
- functions are first-class data values
- higher-order functions are used (functions which take functions as
arguments)
- no global variables
- all data is immutable (cannot be modified)
- functions should always return the same result each time they are called
with the same arguments (so-called "referential transparency")
- computations should be performed lazily as needed
- no side-effects other than those caused by hardware limitations (e.g.
there is only a finite amount of memory available), usually with an
exemption made for I/O
- use of recursion instead of imperative features such as iteration (for
loops, while loops, etc.)


Pure functional programming languages enforce those conventions as design
features, rather than just leaving it up to the coder to apply them as a
convention. Impure functional languages, such as Python, don't enforce all
(or even any) of those conditions, although they may provide certain
functional features.



-- 
Steven