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Thanks for the thoughtful response. As you know, I was drawing a parallel between the compile-time contract that a class provides and the role of complex types

Thanks for the thoughtful response. As you know, I was drawing a parallel between the compile-time contract that a class provides and the role of complex types in functional programming. In many cases, a module that defines data types alongside functions operating on them feels similar to a class that encapsulates both structure and behavior. I realize there are deeper distinctions and advantages on the functional side, but I’m just trying to simplify and compare the basic conceptual building blocks. I also really liked your spectrum from imperative to functional. It's a helpful framing.

Twey 1y ago
No you're totally right! In fact I think you're even more right than you said in the original post: the analogy you draw isn't just an analogy, they are in fact the exact same thing. A class is (amongst other things) a module, and a closure, and a type. In functional programming these things are (usually!) deconstructed rather than all being facets of the ‘class’ concept, but they're all still there and they all work exactly the same way as in OOP (perhaps modulo mutability, depending on choice of languages — but you can see local mutability as syntax sugar over function calls anyway).