What’s the Best Way to Approach Functional Programming as a Beginner?

I think your second approach using `reduce` is the most idiomatic way to do this in functional programming. It's concise, expressive, and gets the job done in a clean way! Your first approach with recursion is interesting but could be cleaner with pattern matching methods like in Haskell instead of if-else checks. It would make the code more readable. By the way, that third approach with chunking seems overcomplicated for this problem, but it’s great to see you experimenting!

If you're really looking to dive into functional programming, consider trying out Haskell. It's often seen as a pinnacle of functional programming. Your approach #2 is definitely the most idiomatic in JavaScript, while approach #1 is a valid way to think through it, though pattern matching would simplify it a lot. I’m not totally sure about that chunking idea; it feels a bit convoluted for finding a maximum. Stick with the simpler functional concepts to start with!

Approach #2 does seem like the best option overall, as it’s simple and expressive! That first method with recursion is a nice attempt at applying core concepts, but you'd normally want to avoid that kind of deep branching in functional languages. The third method is quite unique… perhaps too unique? It's creative, but I think you might find there's a simpler route that gets to the same end result without complicating things.