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This is a excellent write-up. I'm really impressed how quick it was to whip up a UI for manual solving.

I would argue however that Rust counts as a functional programming language, however. Algebraic data types, higher-order programming and immutability are all idiomatic features of the language.

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I was impressed by that too. It is a very valuable skill, to be able to build a UI prototype that quickly. The author attributes it to Clojure and there is certainly truth in that, but given he also basically learned a new programming language in a day and got a decent rating on his solution makes me think it is not just the tool. For one, this is a smart and skillful programmer. But it also takes a playful mindset and training to be able to do this.

The fact that the author was able to find success with Zig so quickly speaks not only to the author's abilities but to the simplicity of Zig. Learning enough C++ or Rust to be productive in the same amount of time would be a much greater challenge.

Rust is missing the function part though. For good reason - closures and GC are like PB&J. But programming exclusively with closures like you can in Haskell or Scheme isn't as feasible in Rust. This isn't to say Rust doesn't have excellent closures, lambdas, etc given its design constraints.

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