[mmcdermott]

The part about the two mindsets sounds vaguely familiar. Is there an article or blog post that lays this out in more detail?

[linguae]

A good paper describing functional programming and also talks about the differences between these two mindsets is "Conception, Evolution, and Application of Functional Programming Languages" by Paul Hudak (1989). You can find a copy at https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse583/00wi/p359-h....

[SourPatch]

This might be what you're thinking of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better