[syklemil]

> But in functional code, the entire chain is a single statement. There are no natural breakpoints where the reader could expect to find justifications for the code.

How are we deciding what's "functional code", here? Because functional languages also provide means like `let` and `where` bindings to break up statements. The example might in pseudo-Haskell be broken up like

    distinctAuthors = distinct authors
      where
        authors = map (\book -> book.author) longBooks
        longBooks = filter (\book -> book.pageCount > 1000) books

IMO the code here is also simple enough that I don't see it needing much in the way of comments, but it is also possible and common to intersperse comments in the dot style, e.g.

    distinctAuthors = books // TODO: Where does this collection come from anyway?
        // books are officially considered long if they're over 1000 pages, c.f. the Council of Chalcedon (451)
        .filter(book => book.pageCount > 1000)
        // All books have exactly one author for some reason. Why? Shouldn't this be a flatmap or something?
        .map(book => book.author)
        // We obviously actually want a set[author] here, rather than a pruned list[author],
        // but in this imaginary DinkyLang we'd have to implement that as map[author, null]
        // and that's just too annoying to deal with
        .distinct()