In my experience the main benefit of functional programming is function purity. I am completely fine with mutation inside of a function since the all of the mutation logic is self-contained in a single small block of text.
I think everyone should take a shot at writing a non-trivial functional program to see the benefit. Once you understand what makes it great, you can apply what you've learned to the majority of OOP/impure languages.
I think everyone should take a shot at writing a non-trivial functional program to see the benefit. Once you understand what makes it great, you can apply what you've learned to the majority of OOP/impure languages.