I would consider the compiler to be working in the functional realm, for most of its ideas. Such that I would think it is between the imperative of the machine

I would consider the compiler to be working in the functional realm, for most of its ideas. Such that I would think it is between the imperative of the machine and the imperative of what a person is thinking? That said, I confess I'm curious how on what the constraints are on this one. I thought there was an increment instruction, specifically. I'm guessing safety and general debugging concerns? And it occurs to me that you are showing an intermediate language in this? Static Single-Assignment (SSA) is definitely in the vein of moving imperative to functional for easy manipulation there. Definitely fun topics to explore here.