[thesz]

For all practical purposes, it very much is, consider random number generation.

[layer8]

While agree with the main statement, I don’t understand the point about RNG. You don’t need Turing-completeness nor imperativeness for RNG.

[thesz]

Most probably you do not want two of your SELECT statements to have the same seed during the execution.

This necessitates some state, most probably, persisted one. Hence, imperativeness.