Functional Programming: A PragPub Anthology

It’s a Way of Thinking

So to a first approximation, functional programming is about programming with pure functions and immutable state, unlike imperative programming, which relies heavily on mutability. Around this immutable core there is a set of language techniques and features that replace mutable imperative techniques. Examining these will give us a deeper feeling for what it is to think and program functionally.

Let’s take a look at a simple example: filtering a list so it only contains odd numbers.

public List<Integer> filterOdds(List<Integer> list) {
  List<Integer> filteredList = new ArrayList<Integer>();

  for(Integer current : list) {
    if(1 == current % 2) {
      filteredList.add(current);
    }
  }
  return filteredList; ...