> I always feel object oriented languages are some sort of poor approximation to some sophisticated functional programming concepts (lenses, comonads, etc) Eve

> I always feel object oriented languages are some sort of poor approximation to some sophisticated functional programming concepts (lenses, comonads, etc) Even if they were, I don't see why it matters. The nature of the basic mathematical building blocks doesn't have much of an impact when the problem described is intractable to begin with. Not a very good example, but the n-body problem is just as intractable, and no easier to simulate, using Newtonian mechanics than when using epicycles (well, it is, but not because Newtonian mechanics is more mathematically simple). My point is just that when dealing with intractable systems, simplifying the basic mathematical building blocks is not necessarily where we should spend our optimisation efforts.