I have always thought that functional programming can be done in Python. Thus, I was surprised that Python didn’t get much of a mention in this question, and when it was mentioned, it normally wasn’t very positive. However, not many reasons were given for this (lack of pattern matching and algebraic data types were mentioned). So my question is: why isn’t Python very good for functional programming? Are there more reasons than its lack of pattern matching and algebraic data types? Or are these concepts so important to functional programming that a language that doesn’t support them can only be classed as a second rate functional programming language? (Keep in mind that my experience with functional programming is quite limited.)