Functional Python Programming - Third Edition

 2 Introducing Essential Functional Concepts

Most of the features of functional programming are already part of the Python language. Our goal in writing functional Python is to shift our focus away from imperative (procedural or object-oriented) techniques as much as possible.

We’ll look at the following functional programming topics:

• In Python, functions are first-class objects.

• We can use and create higher-order functions.

• We can create pure functions very easily.

• We can work with immutable data.

• In a limited way, we can create functions that have non-strict evaluation of sub-expressions. Python generally evaluates expressions strictly. As we’ll see later, a few operators are non-strict.

• We can design functions that exploit eager versus lazy ...