Functional programming basically just means that you handle program state explicitly- All the other parts of FP follow from this fact. Having explicit state is

Functional programming basically just means that you handle program state explicitly- All the other parts of FP follow from this fact. Having explicit state is a good idea and _may_ become the default way to write programs at some point in the future- You would only deviate from this if you have a specific reason (such as a performance optimization.)