Ask HN: How to explain functional programming to my 13-year old?
Thanks to terrific programs and online resources like Codecademy, Scratch, and Khan Academy, my 13-year old has started to learn about HTML and CSS, as well as how to code in languages as diverse as JavaScript and Python.<p>I don&#x27;t remember how we got on the topic of functional programming, but he asked me to explain it. So... I started down the path of comparing functional programming with imperative programming and then quickly realized I didn&#x27;t know enough about functional programming to explain it properly :-)<p>How do you explain functional programming to someone just learning how to program? Would you suggest that someone completely new to programming start with a functional programming language like Erlang, Haskell, or Scheme instead of traditional, more imperative languages like Java, Python, and C?