[enntwo]

Many people find function chaining more intuitive to read, or enjoy it more after being exposed to it for a period of time. The reason that functions are used to set flags or parameters is one of the basises of functional programming, which is to remove side effects.

In the above example, the state of employees is the same after the execution of the statement as it was before, if you were to set the "Parallel" flag or "Ordered" flag before hand each as their own assignment statement, then you would have modified the initial object and created a side effect.

I am not challenging your opinion, but simply answering your question as to why.

[zokier]

I, for one, find that kind of function chaining somewhat unintuitive even while I understand the logic behind it. I except methods of an object to modify that object, not to return a modified version of the object.