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One of the characteristics of functional programming is as follows:

You’re describing the result you want rather than explicitly specifying the steps required to get there.

I found this quote at https://realpython.com/python-functional-programming/.

I don't really understand what is the meaning of this. Functional Programs still have to define steps to calculate something, there is no magic.

For example, a quicksort in Haskell looks something like this:

quicksort :: (Ord a) => [a] -> [a]  
quicksort [] = []  
quicksort (x:xs) =   
    let smallerSorted = quicksort [a | a <- xs, a <= x]  
        biggerSorted = quicksort [a | a <- xs, a > x]  
    in  smallerSorted ++ [x] ++ biggerSorted 

I don't really understand where the "you're describing the result" part is there. In imperative programming language I'd do pretty much the same thing. The only difference is that probably I wouldn't have a one-liner like [a | a <- xs, a <= x], I'd have to do some loop. However, it's just syntax sugar, normally I'd create my own method/function that does exactly the same thing as [a | a <- xs, a <= x]. So, I don't consider that syntax to be some breakthrough, because it could some as a library in any other language.

Could you help me to understand the meaning of the quote in the title of this post?

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It's just someone's opinion. I don't find it super persuasive, for the reasons you've articulated. There are some situations where the code in Haskell is a bit closer to a mathematical specification than the code we'd write in C (say), but it seems like it is open to debate how common that is.

Not everything written on the Internet is 100% reliable or authoritative.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks, couldn't agree more on the last sentence. $\endgroup$
    – mnj
    Feb 3, 2022 at 9:33

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