Both Object-oriented and Functional programming paradigm are used nowadays in writing computer programs. You may want to know which one is better. Let’s find out which one is better and when and where to use them.
What is Functional programming?
Functional programming is the art of creating computer programs by applying and composing with pure functions. It helps eliminate side effects associated with changing data or state through immutable data structures and constants while controlling the data flow through functions.
What is Object-oriented programming?
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is the most popular programming paradigm based on objects concept, which contains object properties and methods. Most Object-oriented programming languages use the “class” keyword to construct objects, and it’s like a blueprint of an object.
In functional programming, codes are more concise, predictable, and easier to test than object-oriented programming. Because of conciseness, it saves lots of lines of code. Some of its features help to execute the code faster compared to object-oriented programming. In functional programming, its functions have no side effects means don’t impact code running on multiple processors. In Object-oriented programming, its methods can have side effects and may have an impact on processors.
All functions are first-class and considered as first-class citizens. So a function can be passed through other functions as arguments, returning them as the values from different functions, assigning them to variables, or storing them in data structures, which is a great thing.
Functional programming provides many advantages like efficiency, lazy evaluation, nested functions, bug-free code, parallel programming. On the other hand, Object-oriented programming does not support parallel programming. Debugging is not that easy compared to functional programming. Functional programming mainly supports abstraction over data and abstraction over behavior. But Object-oriented programming only supports abstraction over data.
Object-oriented programming also provides memory management features. It gives a significant benefit in designing large programs. It can be easily divided into smaller parts and help distinguish the parts or phases that need to be executed or created in a particular way.
Conclusion
Object-Oriented programming and functional programming both are different concepts and used in different scenarios for solving problems. The programmers widely use the object-oriented programming paradigm, and very popular. Anyone can say one of these is better than the other, and it’s their personal opinion.