If anything, functional programming gives you too many ways to achieve the same thing.
How many ways can a reasonable programmer write the factorial function imperatively (without using the closed form formula or any dynamic programming). A maximum of two. A for loop or use recursion.
It is truly unfortunate when your ability to program functionally is directly proportional to how much of the standard library you have memorised. This makes functional programming much harder to learn.
edit: I don't really care if you downvote. I come here discuss programming.
How many ways can a reasonable programmer write the factorial function imperatively (without using the closed form formula or any dynamic programming). A maximum of two. A for loop or use recursion.
But just look at how many ways you could write factorial in a functional programming language. http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html
It is truly unfortunate when your ability to program functionally is directly proportional to how much of the standard library you have memorised. This makes functional programming much harder to learn.
edit: I don't really care if you downvote. I come here discuss programming.