Here we go again. I will note that this is from 2002. But the fact that it is being recirculated now suggests that this is a timely topic. I've been a program

Here we go again. I will note that this is from 2002. But the fact that it is being recirculated now suggests that this is a timely topic. I've been a programmer for 30 some odd years. 25 of those professionally. I started on BASIC, learned C as fast as I could because I wanted to program games and all the cool kids were writing games in C. Then OOP became hot and I learned C++ and Java and was introduced to OOP design patterns and threw myself into studying Gang of Four, PLOPD and other classic works on the subject. Yes, I remember the "hot-ness" of OOP in the 90s. Next, Java, even the marketing forces that led to calling ECMAScript "Java"Script and shoe-horning objects into what was intended by Brenden Eich to be a functional language came out of this idea that OOP was the next big thing in software development. But what I don't remember was anyone, at any point in my 25 year career history, saying that OOP is the "only way." In fact, I remember having a keen interest in LISP and FP as an aspiring novice in the 90s. I wanted to learn everything about languages, language theory and computer science that I could. People encouraged me to pursue that and never once said "stick with OOP and forget other paradigms." But what I do see today, are people being so trendy and fashionable that they ARE saying these things about Functional Programming. OOP is being thrown with the bathwater HARD while people claim that it has "failed" and that everything should be Functional. Both paradigms solve problems in different ways, have their own strengths, weaknesses and value judgments. OOP values custom types and encapsulating state whereas FP favours primitives, immutability and statelessnes. OOP sees conditional logic and the root of all complexity whereas FP views state as the root of all complexity. Neither is right or wrong and both points of view are provide better tradeoffs in different situations. In other words, do your job as an engineer and pick the right tool for the problem at hand. Stop pretending that we are going to achieve some utopian panacea where we finally resolve the Church / Turing hypothesis and can say, objectively and absolutely, that one approach is always better in every situation.