Functional Python Programming

Subdividing the procedural paradigm

We can subdivide imperative languages into a number of discrete categories. In this section, we'll glance quickly at the procedural versus object-oriented distinction. What's important here is to see how object-oriented programming is a subset of imperative programming. The distinction between procedural and object-orientation doesn't reflect the kind of fundamental difference that functional programming represents.

We'll use code examples to illustrate the concepts. For some, this will feel like reinventing a wheel. For others, it provides a concrete expression of abstract concepts.

For some kinds of computations, we can ignore Python's object-oriented features and write simple numeric algorithms. For example, ...