Is it possible to give an explanation of functional programming without using factorial or fibonacci as an example?
@sojournTime recursion is a great example of functional programming and those are great examples of recursion so they tend to get used in intros to functional programming
@valleyforge Mergesort is also an excellent example of recursion.
@valleyforge Shriram Krishnamurthi and the Racketh, HTDP people say yes:
> We all know how to teach recursion. We’ve done it for decades. We pick some honored, time-tested examples—Fibonacci numbers and factorial being leading candidates—and use them to teach the general idea... But I’m here to tell you they got it wrong... we need not repeat this cycle; we have much better methods...
https://parentheticallyspeaking.org/articles/how-not-to-teach-recursion/
@valleyforge do you mean recursion based on the two examples you provided (factorial and Fibonacci)? Functional programming is not just limited to recursive functions and is a declarative programming paradigm:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming