different problems require different tools. functional has its place and imperative has its place. that's why i was so snarky in replying (even if i did get the timeline wrong): prescribing one over the other is dogmatic and pretentious.

You're right, we should avoid forming cults and following blind obsessions. Programming should remain the domain of rationality.

I find that the more competent people are as programmers, the more they treat their preferred one as a religion. It's not even that they can't hack others, it's that they've arrived at the One True Way. Less experienced programmers (and moreso those who can kind of code but are faking their way with Stack Overflow) tend to be (or claim to be) language-agnostic.