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)

The pure functional paradigm in different languages

It doesn't take any particular infrastructure to program in a purely functional style. All you need is to be able to see side effects in code, to notice when they place an extra mental load on your mind and require you to hold more things in mind at once. And of course, you need to know how to abstract them away, how to make this mental load go away. Most modern programming languages are built for engineers. This is why they provide excellent capabilities for abstraction, including imperative languages such as C or Java. This is why, if you know what to abstract and how, you should be able to abstract that in these languages. And if you know precisely how the imperative style can hurt you, you can shield yourself from the trouble.

Moreover, certain imperative programming languages provide a specific infrastructure that facilitates...