[TuringTest]

> It does not imply that all distinctions between the semantics of languages and the structure of hardware thus are collapsed. It means that you can write an equivalent program using different semantics or different hardware.

No, it means that every computable program or device can be described through functional semantics, and therefore that very same program running on that same hardware can be described mathematically with them (not an 'equivalent' program, but the same program with the same runtime behaviour, just described in low level with a different format).

That's a core principle of computer science that predates computers themselves, and people arguing about the benefits of the imperative style tend to be unaware of this fact, making their arguments look weak.