I've Seen Them Do It

The ultimate functional programming dad joke has arrived! In OOP, we obsess over objects, but functional programmers just smugly call them "side effects" and try to avoid them like that one relative at Thanksgiving dinner. The punchline works on multiple levels because side effects in functional programming are operations that modify state outside their scope—exactly what pure functional programming tries to eliminate. It's like watching someone build an elaborate sandcastle while promising not to touch the sand. Whoever made this meme definitely mutated some global variables in their day.