[mbivert]

> How do you measure beauty? You can't: "beauty" is subjective

Let me try: in classical dance, martial arts, or even skateboarding, advanced skills manifest as effortlessness: the movements comes naturally, they're not forced, things just flow.

If you compare a typical functional (recursive + pattern matching, but the point would stand even with a fold) factorial with an imperative one (for loop), the functional approach is more effortless, you have to be less explicit about what's going on. It's more eloquent.

However as you seem to imply, when we're programming, the focus should be on delivering something that works as expected; this particular kind of aesthetic is secondary at best.