In a paragraph...

or two, describe to me why you love functional programming and lisp/scheme/haskell so damn much /prog. You guys seem to be convinced that it's a superior way to program when conceptually it seems rather limited in comparison to imperative programming.

>>2

Programming anything of use relies upon side effects. The side effects (changes) are the entire purpose. If you can't the state of something, the only useful programs you can make are ones that are making calculations.