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Re: Functions vs OOP

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On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 10:15 AM, William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> wrote:
> During some recent research, and re-familiarization with Python, I came
> across documentation that suggests that programming using functions, and
> programming using objects were somehow opposing techniques.
>
> It seems to me that they are complimentary.  It makes sense to create
> objects and have some functions that take those objects as arguments. Are
> they suggesting that any function that takes an object as an argument should
> always be a method of that object?  Conversely I can see creating functions
> that take raw input (e.g. strings) and return it in a format compatible with
> an object's constructor, rather than have objects accept any conceivable
> format for its constructor.
>
> Am I missing something, or am I taking things too literally?

I think you may be confusing "functional programming" and "programming
using functions".  These are not the same thing.

Functional programming is about using functions in the *mathematical*
sense.  A mathematical function maps one value (or tuple of values) to
another value.  The mapped value never varies; if it did, it would be
a different function.  So functional programming eschews the use of
functions where the results depend on any internal or external state
beyond the values of the passed-in arguments, such as the variable
state of the object the method is being called on.

Functional programming and OOP are not entirely opposed -- for
example, string methods in Python such as str.upper are perfectly
functional, since strings are immutable.  Many functional languages
such as Common LISP also have powerful OOP facilities.  Still,
functional programming does not fit well with the traditional OOP
model of objects passing messages to other objects, which generally
implies statefulness.

Cheers,
Ian

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Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 12:15 -0400
  Re: Functions vs OOP Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-09-04 02:25 +1000
    Re: Functions vs OOP Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-09-03 15:15 -0400
      Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 17:34 -0400
        Re: Functions vs OOP Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2011-09-04 07:39 +1000
          Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <nospam@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 17:58 -0400
        Re: Functions vs OOP Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-09-03 21:51 -0400
          Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 22:18 -0400
    Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <nospam@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-05 14:58 -0400
  Re: Functions vs OOP MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2011-09-03 17:29 +0100
    Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 17:09 -0400
  Re: Functions vs OOP Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2011-09-03 12:50 -0600
    Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-03 17:13 -0400
    Re: Functions vs OOP tinnews@isbd.co.uk - 2011-09-04 09:13 +0100
      Re: Functions vs OOP Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-09-04 21:18 +1000
      Re: Functions vs OOP Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-09-04 14:32 -0400
        Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <nospam@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-04 15:43 -0400
          Re: Functions vs OOP Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-09-05 09:41 +1000
            Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <nospam@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-04 20:46 -0400
            Re: Functions vs OOP Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-09-05 10:59 +1000
  Re: Functions vs OOP rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2011-09-04 06:13 -0700
    Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <noreply@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-05 13:45 -0400
      Re: Functions vs OOP Jean-Michel Pichavant <jeanmichel@sequans.com> - 2011-09-05 21:04 +0200
        Re: Functions vs OOP William Gill <nospam@domain.invalid> - 2011-09-05 20:30 -0400
      Re: Functions vs OOP Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2011-09-05 18:55 -0400

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