&gt; such as map, fold, filter, pattern matching, control of side-effects, etc.<p><i>map</i> and <i>filter</i> have become natural parts of my thinking, <i>fold</i> too is getting there, and avoidance of side-effects even gives pleasant tingles to the math-guy in me, but I&#x27;ve never understood what pattern matching brings to the table. In my admitted limited understanding, they seem to be a syntactic sugar for <i>if-elseif</i> branching that ends up scattering the logic of a function to multiple blocks of code, while bringing no obvious benefit compared to them.<p>Since you mentioned your success explaining the justifications for these things, I thought I&#x27;d take advantage of that here. :) Could you explain what I&#x27;m missing with pattern matching?