Comment by csneeky

Fact: functional programming takes more time to learn. It's not full of people that are "smarter' or "snobs" it's just full of people that have taken the time and invested in educating themselves to get to the point where they can do it well. It's not "better", it's just a useful tool for certain types of problems. I'd advise any young engineer to just learn how to do both "imperative" and "functional" programming well and avoid getting dogmatic about it. The vitriol here is in dogma here to be sure