11 Facts About Functional programming

In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions.

Functional programming has its roots in academia, evolving from the lambda calculus, a formal system of computation based only on functions.

Functional programming defines functional programs as being built up in a hierarchical way by means of "combining forms" that allow an "algebra of programs"; in modern language, this means that functional programs follow the principle of compositionality.

Functional programming programs do not have assignment statements, that is, the value of a variable in a functional program never changes once defined.

Pure functional programming completely prevents side-effects and provides referential transparency.

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Functional programming languages are typically less efficient in their use of CPU and memory than imperative languages such as C and Pascal.

Similarly, the idea of immutable data from functional programming is often included in imperative programming languages, for example the tuple in Python, which is an immutable array, and Object.

Functional programming is an active area of research in the field of programming language theory.

Functional programming has been employed in a wide range of industrial applications.

Functional programming "platforms" have been popular in finance for risk analytics.

Outside of computer science, functional programming is used to teach problem-solving, algebraic and geometric concepts.