You can argue exactly the same for the first example: what is for? Why is for a special construct and not a function? What is (int i = 0; i < n; i++)? What is a

You can argue exactly the same for the first example: what is for? Why is for a special construct and not a function? What is (int i = 0; i < n; i++)? What is array[i]++? What is n here? The functional approach allows you to only care about the what ("add 1 to each element of the list") instead of the how ("create a number that goes from 0 to the size of the list minus one (because our language is 0-indexed, because arrays are in fact directly related to how memory is laid out), then for each value of this number, take the value that's at this index in the array and increment it"). I'd argue that the functional approach is easier to learn, especially if you haven't had prior experience with programming. You also said earlier than functional is harder to learn because you have to use recursion to make for loop. That's not really true, you can just use functions like map which are already here. And when you start tackling recursive data structures like trees, recursion is easier to understand.