By "state in general", I particularly meant mutable or nonlocal state in general. There is obviously nothing wrong with using variables. To restate my analogy:

By "state in general", I particularly meant mutable or nonlocal state in general. There is obviously nothing wrong with using variables. To restate my analogy: the problem is when you can run the same function twice with the same input and get a different result. Or when the same variable can mean two totally different things depending on some external context.