[smckk]

Could a not-too trivial example like the difference between a Java sudoko solver and a lisp version with all the bells and whistles of FP such as functions as data and return values, recursion and macros be used to illustrate the benefits?

[tikotus]

Here's one in Clojure using its core.logic library. I'd say it's pretty neat. You can do something similar in something like Prolog, but a Java implementation would look very different.

https://github.com/sideshowcoder/core-logic-sudoku-solver/bl...