Yes, but the difference is Functional Programmers don't have to actually build anything. They made a well funded mess in the eighties with the AI research, and

Yes, but the difference is Functional Programmers don't have to actually build anything. They made a well funded mess in the eighties with the AI research, and now they can just feel superior to anybody else while producing a tiny percentage of production code in all fields combined, and not very good or popular one at that. The most popular or useful thing a functional programmer can build (or has every built, Emacs aside) is his own functional language. /s