Functional Programming

Functional programming is a style of programming where programs are constructed by defining and applying functions. In pure functional code, the output of a function only depends on the value of its arguments, so the same expression always produces the same result. This is in sharp contrast to imperative and object-oriented languages, where every statement can have side effects that influence the results of other statements.

Apart from the absence of side-effects, another important feature of most functional programming languages are their powerful type systems. By modeling the different classes of data used in a program, types can be used to structure programs and detect many common errors that would otherwise go unnoticed. Certain languages with so-called dependent type systems can even specify any imaginable functional property in the type of a program, guaranteeing that the program works as it is supposed to before it is ever executed.