Python: Journey from Novice to Expert

Summary

For some reason, functional programming is a paradigm that scares many people, but really it shouldn't. The most important difference between functional and procedural programming (within Python) is the mindset. Everything is executed using simple (and often translations of the mathematical equivalent) functions without any storage of variables. Simply put, a functional program consists of many functions having a simple input and output, without using (or even having) any outside scope or context to access. Python is not a purely functional language, so it is easy to cheat and work outside of the local scope, but that is not recommended.

This chapter covered the basics of functional programming within Python and some of the mathematics ...