Updated May 6, 2023
Differences Between Functional Programming vs OOP
Functional programming is the programming technique that accentuates the functional factors required for creating and implementing programs. OOP or Object-Oriented Programs are conceptual programming techniques that use objects as the key. The programming model used in functional programming is declarative, while object-oriented programming uses the imperative programming model. In functional programs, variables and functions are the main elements of the code, while in object-oriented programs, objects and methods are the key elements.
Functional Programming
Functional programming also supports the programming languages like Lisp, Clojure, Wolfram, Erlang, Haskell, F#, R, and other prominent and domain-specific languages. Functional programming is an excellent fit for data science work, and R is the popular language among data scientists. Translating FP languages into an interactive environment can make it easier to understand the code.
Functional programming provides advantages like efficiency, lazy evaluation, nested functions, bug-free code, and parallel programming. In simple language, functional programming is writing the function having statements to execute a particular task for the application. The function can be easily invoked and reused at any point. It also helps the code to be managed, and the same thing or statements does not need to write again and again.
Functional Programming based on different concepts:
- High Order Functions (HOF)
- Pure functions
- Recursion
- Strict and Non-strict Evaluation
- Type systems
- Referential Transparency
In functional programming, functions are referred to as first-class citizens.
OOP(Object-Oriented Programming)
Object-oriented programming is based on the main features that are:
- Abstraction: It helps in letting useful information or relevant data to a user, increasing the program’s efficiency and making things simple.
- Inheritance: It helps in inheriting the methods, functions, properties, and fields of a base class in the derived class.
- Polymorphism: It helps in doing one task in many ways with the help of overloading and overriding, also known as compile-time and run-time polymorphism.
- Encapsulation: It helps in hiding irrelevant data from a user and prevents the user from unauthorized access.
Object-oriented programming languages are C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, Objective-C, Swift, Dart, Lisp, etc. In an object-oriented application, objects can be easily reused in another application. Creating new objects for the same class in object-oriented programming and maintaining and altering the code is easy.
It also has the feature of memory management. It dramatically benefits designing large programs, which can be easily divided into smaller parts. It helps distinguish the components or phases that need to be executed or planned in a certain way.
Head-to-Head Comparison Between Functional Programming and OOP
Below are the Top 8 Comparison Between Functional Programming and OOP:
Key Difference Between Functional Programming and OOP
Below is the list of points that describes the difference between Functional Programming and OOP:
- Functional programming performs many different operations for which the data is fixed. People use object-oriented programming to perform a few operations with common behavior and different variants.
- Functional programming has a stateless programming model. Object-oriented programming has a stateful programming model.
- In functional programming, a state does not exist. In object-oriented programming, the state exists.
- In functional programming, a function is the direct manipulation unit. In object-oriented, an object is the direct manipulation unit.
- Its functions in functional programming have no side effects, meaning it does not impact code running on multiple processors. In Object-oriented programming, its methods can have side effects and may affect processors.
- In functional programming, the main focus of programming is what we are doing. In object-oriented programming, the main focus of programming is how we are doing.
- Functional programming mainly supports abstraction over data and abstraction over behavior. Object-oriented programming mainly supports abstraction over data only.
- Functional programming provides high performance in processing large data for applications. Object-oriented programming is not good for big data processing.
- Functional programming does not support conditional statements. In Object-oriented programming, conditional statements like if-else statements and switch statements can be used.
Functional Programming and OOP Comparison Table
Following is the Comparison Table Between Functional Programming and OOP
| Basis For Comparison | Functional Programming | OOP |
| Definition | Functional programming emphasizes an evaluation of functions. | Object-oriented programming is based on the concept of objects. |
| Data | Functional programming uses immutable data. | Object-oriented uses mutable data. |
| Model | Functional programming does follow a declarative programming model. | Object-oriented programming does follow an imperative programming model. |
| Support | Functional Programming supports parallel programming. | Object-oriented programming does not support parallel programming. |
| Execution | In Functional programming, the statements can be executed in any order. | In OOPs, the statements should be executed in a particular order. |
| Iteration | In Functional programming, recursion is used for iterative data. | People use loops for iterative data in OOP. |
| Element | The basic elements of functional programming are Variables and Functions. | The essential elements of object-oriented programming are objects and methods. |
| Use | People use functional programming only when they have few things with more operations. | People use object-oriented programming when they have many things with few operations. |
Conclusion
Functional Programming and Object-oriented programming are both different concepts of programming language. Both Functional Programming vs OOP languages aim to provide bug-free code which can be easily understandable, well-coded, managed, and rapid development. Functional and object-oriented programming uses different methods for storing and manipulating the data. In functional programming, data cannot be stored in objects but can only be transformed by creating functions. In object-oriented programming, data is stored in objects. Programmers widely use object-oriented programming, and it is also thriving.
In Object-oriented programming, it is tough to maintain objects while increasing the levels of inheritance. It also breaks the principle of encapsulation and is not even fully modular. Functional programming always requires a new object to execute functions, and running the applications takes a lot of memory. Finally, it is always up to the programmers or developers to choose the programming language concept that makes their development productive and easy.
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