Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Third Edition

Book Image

Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms - Third Edition

Overview of this book

A data structure is a particular way of organizing data in a computer to utilize resources efficiently. Data structures and algorithms are the base of every solution to any programming problem. With this book, you will learn to write complex and powerful code using the latest ES 2017 features. Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms begins by covering the basics of JavaScript and introduces you to ECMAScript 2017, before gradually moving on to the most important data structures such as arrays, queues, stacks, and linked lists. You will gain in-depth knowledge of how hash tables and set data structures function as well as how trees and hash maps can be used to search files in an HD or represent a database. This book serves as a route to take you deeper into JavaScript. You’ll also get a greater understanding of why and how graphs, one of the most complex data structures, are largely used in GPS navigation systems in social networks. Toward the end of the book, you’ll discover how all the theories presented in this book can be applied to solve real-world problems while working on your own computer networks and Facebook searches.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Introduction to functional programming


So far in this book, we have used a paradigm called imperative programming. In imperative programming, we code each step of the program, describing in detail what needs to be done and in which order it needs to be done.

In this section, we will introduce a new paradigm called functional programming (FP). We have already used some FP code snippets in some algorithms in this book. Functional programming is a paradigm used especially by academics, and thanks to modern languages such as Python and Ruby, it has started to become popular among industry developers as well. And thankfully, we can use JavaScript to program functionally, leveraging its ES2015 capabilities as well.

Functional versus imperative programming

Developing in the functional paradigm is not difficult; it is just a matter of getting used to how the paradigm works. Let's code an example to note the differences.

Consider that we need to print all the elements of an array. We can use imperative...