Book Image

Mastering Functional Programming

Book Image

Mastering Functional Programming

Overview of this book

Functional programming is a paradigm specifically designed to deal with the complexity of software development in large projects. It helps developers to keep track of the interdependencies in the code base and changes in its state in runtime. Mastering Functional Programming provides detailed coverage of how to apply the right abstractions to reduce code complexity, so that it is easy to read and understand. Complete with explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, the book begins by covering the basics such as what lambdas are and how to write declarative code with the help of functions. It then moves on to concepts such as pure functions and type classes, the problems they aim to solve, and how to use them in real-world scenarios. You’ll also explore some of the more advanced patterns in the world of functional programming such as monad transformers and Tagless Final. In the concluding chapters, you’ll be introduced to the actor model, which you can implement in modern functional languages, and delve into parallel programming. By the end of the book, you will be able to apply the concepts of functional programming and object-oriented programming (OOP)in order to build robust applications.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Monad Transformers

Monad Transformers is an important pattern of purely functional programming that allows us to combine effect types. Let's now discuss it in detail.

The specialization of effect types

We've discussed how effect types are ubiquitous in purely functional programming and are used in order to abstract away side effects. You may have also noticed that these types are highly specialized, which means we have almost one-to-one mapping between side effects and effect types. For example, the ability of an application to return null is represented by an Option side effect type. Option is good for such null situations. However, it does not perform well when tasked with modeling errors and exceptions. This...