On the one hand, this reads like "I prefer functional languages, and want to twist procedural languages into a form I'm more familiar with". On the other hand, I do find his re-written example more readable, and I'm not sure if that's due to my previous exposure to functional programming, some innate readability bestowed by the functional programming style, or just the fact that this particular code was rewritten by someone who wanted to make it a publishable example (as opposed to just getting it to work).