To which kind of problem is functional programming well suited? [closed]

Question

Functional programming seems to be a paradigm in computer science which has more and more echo.

I wonder which kind of problems are better solved with a functional programming approach rather than with a more traditional object oriented approach.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Functional programming is best suited for most kinds of problems, including anything you would normally use object-oriented programming for, except for maybe problems that require the storing of a lot of state or other side effects. Aside from that, FP handles complex problems much more gracefully than OOP, as a lot of it comes from a mathematical background (starting with the lambda calculus). You have much more flexibility as far as abstraction and composition go. An object-oriented program with a lot of design patterns could be refactored using more functional constructs which will allow you to do the same thing without the boilerplate structures that design patterns make you write. In addition to mathematics and parsing, FP has also been extensively used in artificial intelligence (particularly Lisp).