[oop] What is difference between functional and imperative programming languages?

I think it's possible to express functional programming in an imperative fashion:

  • Using a lot of state check of objects and if... else/ switch statements
  • Some timeout/ wait mechanism to take care of asynchornousness

There are huge problems with such approach:

  • Rules/ procedures are repeated
  • Statefulness leaves chances for side-effects/ mistakes

Functional programming, treating functions/ methods like objects and embracing statelessness, was born to solve those problems I believe.

Example of usages: frontend applications like Android, iOS or web apps' logics incl. communication with backend.

Other challenges when simulating functional programming with imperative/ procedural code:

  • Race condition
  • Complex combination and sequence of events. For example, user tries to send money in a banking app. Step 1) Do all of the following in parallel, only proceed if all is good a) Check if user is still good (fraud, AML) b) check if user has enough balance c) Check if recipient is valid and good (fraud, AML) etc. Step 2) perform the transfer operation Step 3) Show update on user's balance and/ or some kind of tracking. With RxJava for example, the code is concise and sensible. Without it, I can imagine there'd be a lot of code, messy and error prone code

I also believe that at the end of the day, functional code will get translated into assembly or machine code which is imperative/ procedural by the compilers. However, unless you write assembly, as humans writing code with high level/ human-readable language, functional programming is the more appropriate way of expression for the listed scenarios