June 2014
Intermediate to advanced
180 pages
4h 21m
English
Content preview from Functional ThinkingBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 1. Why
Let’s say for a moment that you are a lumberjack. You have the best axe in the forest, which makes you the most productive lumberjack in the camp. Then one day someone shows up and extols the virtues of a new tree-cutting paradigm, the chainsaw. The sales guy is persuasive, so you buy a chainsaw, but you don’t know how it works. Demonstrating your expertise with the previous tree-cutting paradigm, you swing it vigorously at a tree—without cranking it. You quickly conclude that this newfangled chainsaw is a fad, and you return to your axe. Then, someone appears and shows you how to crank the chainsaw.
The problem with a completely new programming paradigm isn’t learning a new language. After all, everyone reading this has learned numerous computer languages—language syntax is merely details. The tricky part is learning to think in a different way.
This book explores the subject of functional programming but isn’t really about functional programming languages. Make no mistake—I show lots of code, in numerous languages; this book is all about code. As I’ll illustrate, writing code in a “functional” manner touches on design trade–offs, different reusable building blocks, and a host of other insights. Because I favor ideas over syntax, I start with Java, the most familiar baseline for the largest group of developers, and mix in both pre-Java 8 and Java 8 examples. As much as possible, I show functional programming concepts in Java (or close relatives) and move to other languages ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.