Programming Scala

Chapter 8. Functional Programming in Scala

Every decade or two, a major computing idea goes mainstream. These ideas may have lurked in the background of academic computer science research, or possibly in some lesser-known field of industry. The transition to mainstream acceptance comes in response to a perceived problem for which the idea is well suited. Object-oriented programming, which was invented in the 1960s, went mainstream in the 1980s, arguably in response to the emergence of graphical user interfaces, for which the OOP paradigm is a natural fit.

Functional programming appears to be experiencing a similar breakout. Long the topic of computer science research and even older than object-oriented programming, functional programming offers effective techniques for concurrent programming, which is growing in importance.

Because functional programming is less widely understood than object-oriented programming, we won’t assume that you have prior experience with it. We’ll start this chapter with plenty of background information. As you’ll see, functional programming is not only a very effective way to approach concurrent programming, which we’ll explore in depth in Chapter 9, but functional programming can also improve your objects.

Of course, we can’t provide an exhaustive introduction to functional programming. To learn more about it, [O’Sullivan2009] has a more detailed introduction in the context of the Haskell language. [Abelson1996], [VanRoy2004], and [Turbak2008] offer thorough ...