Book Image

Learning Functional Programming in Go

By : Lex Sheehan
Book Image

Learning Functional Programming in Go

By: Lex Sheehan

Overview of this book

Lex Sheehan begins slowly, using easy-to-understand illustrations and working Go code to teach core functional programming (FP) principles such as referential transparency, laziness, recursion, currying, and chaining continuations. This book is a tutorial for programmers looking to learn FP and apply it to write better code. Lex guides readers from basic techniques to advanced topics in a logical, concise, and clear progression. The book is divided into four modules. The first module explains the functional style of programming: pure functional programming, manipulating collections, and using higher-order functions. In the second module, you will learn design patterns that you can use to build FP-style applications. In the next module, you will learn FP techniques that you can use to improve your API signatures, increase performance, and build better cloud-native applications. The last module covers Category Theory, Functors, Monoids, Monads, Type classes and Generics. By the end of the book, you will be adept at building applications the FP way.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Category theory


Category theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with structure, rather than with particulars. It deals with the kinds of structures that make programs composable.

Category theory is a branch of mathematics that is similar to Set theory. A basic example of a category is the category of sets, where the objects are sets and the arrows are functions from one set to another. Objects of a category need are typically sets, and arrows are typically functions. Any way of formalizing a mathematical concept so that it meets the basic conditions on the behavior of objects and arrows is a valid category.

Note

I could not find an easy-to-understand resource for learning category theory. Most of what's out there is geared toward mathematicians. Though I did take a good number of advanced math classes in college, I am not a practicing mathematician. While understanding the logical and mathematical formalism is important (and we'll cover the enough to be conversant), what I really wanted...