This is just an anecdote and not how I began doing FP, but still fun. I was in college. For whatever reason I felt like I had to use methods (Java). So when the teacher had us do a FizzBuzz as a benchmark early in the semester (just to see where everyone was) I thought good programming used a lot of methods so I did something like String fizz() { return "3"; } String buzz() { return "5"; } and one of the professors asked me "Do you have a background in functional programming?" and I had never heard that before, so I thought, yeah, of course my programs function! So I said yes I did have a background in functional programming lol.