Functional vs. Imperative Programming

[AOL User]

Apparently, the administrators in my college have been shifting between functional (e.g., Scheme, Haskell) and imperative (e.g., Java, C++) programming languages in the comp sci intro courses. So naturally, there's been a debate of which type of language is better: functional or imperative?

I'm all for functional, especially Haskell, but there's too many people using imperative now. Maybe that'll change in the future...

[Hrqls]

i dont know those 2 language you named under 'functional' programming ... can you explain the differences between functional and itterative programming ?

[redhead]

I started learning with functional programming.
I think the main difference when you're starting out, is that in functional programming, it's like your average math problem, ie "write a function that will calculate this" - "m'kay y=x*2-3*z", and there arent that many out there who've had experiences with languages like haskell or lisp/scheme where as with imperative language you have the huge scriptkidie group who might have done some homework in the C/C++ area, which will leave you with a gap between the freshmen and the seond hand users.. Plus starting out with functional programming teaches you the main basics, without all the cheap shortcuts people might have gotten used to in their previus lives.

Well atleast thats the main reason my UNI chose to teach in functional programming for the first course.