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Comment by bussierem | Hacker News Reader

I think it's telling that I'm not able to tell whether you're talking about OOP or FP in this comment.

Is there controversy about what FP “actually means”?

The only real contention seems to be whether "functional programming language" should describe languages that merely facilitate functional programming (e.g. lisp), or only to those that enforce it (Haskell.)

Otherwise, whether or not a procedure is a function is about as clear cut as you can get. It either is or it isn't, it's not subjective.

> whether or not a procedure is a function is about as clear cut as you can get

Definitely.

If it returns a single value then it's a function. If it does not return a value, it's a procedure. (Pascal)

All procedures are functions (C)

All procedures and methods are functions (Swift)

A Function procedure is a series of Visual Basic statements enclosed by the Function and End Function statements. (Visual Basic)

...

I'm not sure if you mean this comment to be a joke, or....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function

in as much as there is controversy about what OOP means, yes -- OOP has an established definition, same as FP. The argument about "what it means" comes from the arguments between OOP and other philosophies. People often will purposefully (or accidentally) misrepresent "what it means" to strengthen their own point (or through misunderstanding of the topic). The same happens with FP compared to other philosophies.

[EDIT]: To clarify I am not advocating for one or the other. I made another post in this thread talking about this a bit. GP's comment is able to be applied to basically any technology, language, or philosophy. OOP and FP are just the two "heavyweights" in this.

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