what to study next?

dear programmers:

would it be harmful or dumb to learn functional programming before any other paradigm, such as imperative, or object-oriented? i took one course in college intro c++ and want to move forward now, so i'm thinking either object-oriented and moving to data structures (berkeley cs dept available free on their site), or functional programming w scala (coursera) next.

thoughts?

>>23
Not sure if this is what you mean, but...

Programming is putting together pre-existing parts to create whole programs.
Doesn't matter if the part is as simple as a primitive operation like + or an entire sorting algorithm.

People like Knuth dedicate their lives to developing optimal solutions to problems. It's just plain daft to constantly reinvent the wheel when those are available.

People who have the mentality of "I don't study algorithms, I just write them" are morons who will be doomed to write shitty code for their entire careers.
I actually heard someone say this.
Unsurprisingly they were a Microsoft employee.
It's no surprise Microsoft programs are such bloated garbage.