Book Image

JavaScript : Functional Programming for JavaScript Developers

By : Ved Antani, Simon Timms, Dan Mantyla
Book Image

JavaScript : Functional Programming for JavaScript Developers

By: Ved Antani, Simon Timms, Dan Mantyla

Overview of this book

JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, untyped, lightweight, and interpreted programming language and functional programming is a style that emphasizes and enables smarter code that minimizes complexity and increases modularity. It's a way of writing cleaner code through clever ways of mutating, combining, and using functions. And JavaScript provides an excellent medium for this approach. By learning how to expose JavaScript's true identity as a functional language, we can implement web apps that are more powerful, easier to maintain and more reliable. The java script: Functional Programming for JavaScript Developers course will take you on a journey to show how functional programming when combined with other techniques makes JavaScript programming more efficient. The first module Mastering JavaScript, stress on practical aspects of Javascript development like—Functions and Closures, Runtime debugging techniques, project layout, events and DOM processing, build tools, Object-oriented patterns, isomorphism—everything that a modern Javascript project would need. The second module, Mastering JavaScript Design Patterns - Second Edition, will explore how design patterns can help you improve and organize your JavaScript code. You’ll get to grips with creational, structural, and behavioral patterns as you discover how to put them to work in different scenarios. This updated edition will also delve into reactive design patterns and microservices as they are a growing phenomenon in the world of web development. It will also show you some advanced patterns, including dependency injection and live post processing. The third module, Functional Programming in JavaScript, will help you to write real-world applications by utilizing a wide range of functional techniques and styles. It explores the core concepts of functional programming common to all functional languages, with examples of their use in JavaScript.
Table of Contents (6 chapters)

Chapter 1. The Powers of JavaScript's Functional Side – a Demonstration

Introduction

For decades, functional programming has been the darling of computer science aficionados, prized for its mathematical purity and puzzling nature that kept it hidden in dusty computer labs occupied by data scientists and PhD hopefuls. But now, it is going through a resurgence, thanks to modern languages such as Python, Julia, Ruby, Clojure and—last but not least—JavaScipt.

JavaScript, you say? The web's scripting language? Yes!

JavaScript has proven to be an important technology that isn't going away for quite a while. This is largely due to the fact that it is capable of being reborn and extended with new frameworks and libraries, such as backbone.js, jQuery, Dojo, underscore.js, and many more. This is directly related to JavaScript's true identity as a functional programming language. An understanding of functional programming with JavaScript will be...