When is functional programming used




















Arrow function expressions are ill-suited as methods. They cannot be used as constructors. In this example, we are creating an Arrow function to generate the greatest of all numbers that are passed as an argument. It is our responsibility to declare explicitly that it supports the variable number of arguments.

This is how we can combine a variable number of arguments with arrow functions. An anonymous function is simply a function with no name. The purpose of using anonymous function is to perform a certain task and that task is no longer required to program.

Generally, anonymous functions are declared dynamically at run time. A higher-order function is a function that takes functions as an argument or that returns another function as a result.

The best example of higher-order functions in Javascript is that of Array. This is one of the key topics in functional programming. The process in which a function calls directly or indirectly is called a recursive function.

This concept of recursion is quite useful in solving algorithmic problems like the Towers of Hanoi, Pre-Order, Post-Order, In-Order, and some graph traversal problems. This can be done by calling the function directly from the program repeatedly.

The logic for the program is. The objective of any FP language is to mimic the use of mathematical concepts. However, the basic process of computation is different in functional programming. The major characteristics of functional programming are:. Data is immutable: The data which is present inside the functions are immutable.

Maintainability: Functional programming produces great maintainability for developers and programmers. Modularity: This is one of the most important characteristics of functional programming.

This helps us to break down a large project into simpler modules. These modules can be tested separately which helps you to reduce the time spent on unit testing and debugging. For some, it might be a completely new programming paradigm. I hope you will give it a chance in your programming journey.

This Functional programming concept might be tricky and tough for you. Even if you are a beginner, it will eventually become easier. Then you can enjoy the features of functional programming. Hello busy people, I hope you had fun reading this post, and I hope you learned a lot here! Have fun! Keep learning new things and coding to solve problems. Check out My Twitter , Github , and Facebook.

If this article was helpful, tweet it. Learn to code for free. Get started. Forum Donate. Speaking of which, the higher order functions map and reduce offer a better alternative to iterating over lists. If you have a function and a collection of items, map can run the function on each item and insert the return values into the new collection. For example, this simple map written in Python 2 takes a list of names and returns the character lengths of those names:.

As you can see, there isn't a named function in the above example. Instead, the map takes an inlined, anonymous function defined with lambda. Functional programming is based on lambda calculus , so anything you learn about that subject will help your FP coding. In this example, lambda's parameters are defined on the left side of the colon, and the function body is defined on the right side.

Now, let's make some non-functional code functional. The following code randomly assigns a list of individuals to one of two teams:. It takes functions and collections of items, and then it returns the value of combining the items.

Here is a simple example that outputs the sum of a collection of numbers:. The x variable represents the item currently being iterated over, and the a variable is the accumulator, or the value returned after executing lambda on the previous item.

In the first iteration, a takes the value of the first item, so iteration doesn't begin until the second item. Therefore, the first x is actually the second item. As the reduce function iterates, it runs lambda on the current a and x variables, and the result becomes the a of the next iteration.

It may be difficult for you to see the advantages of using map and reduce for iterations at first, but using them can provide several benefits for a program's overall code. There are also other higher order functions like filter and fold that you should familiarize yourself with if you want to become an FP pro.

Because functional programming is a declarative paradigm, program logic is expressed without explicit instructions for flow control. While imperative programs dedicate many lines of code to flow control, declarative programs abstract the process. For example, the following imperative mapping takes an array of numbers and returns another array with each number multiplied by The same thing can be accomplished with declarative mapping much more succinctly thanks to the functional Array.

Imperative code makes frequent use of statements like for , if and switch. Declarative code, on the other hand, relies more heavily on expressions. Expressions are pieces of code that evaluate and return a value, so they are composed of things like function calls, values, and operators. In FP, expressions can be assigned to identifiers, returned from functions or passed into a function. Working in the web development industry requires adaptability.

The more you know, the more opportunities you'll have for advancing your career. If you don't keep expanding your repertoire of skills, you could find yourself unable to compete in the job market. If you're looking for a way to write code more concisely, concurrently and even want to improve the performance of your code, learning how to use functional programming will be beneficial. In the world of web development, those who become experts usually do so by learning from their….

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Get started. The map function in both languages accepts a function as the argument. Put another way, you could look at the passing of functions into other functions in the Array API or otherwise as functional interfaces. The provider functions which consume the parameter functions are plug-ins to generalized logic. This looks a lot like a strategy pattern in OOP and indeed, in Java, an interface with a single method is generated under the hood but the compactness of a function makes for a very tight component protocol.

As another example, consider Listing 4, which defines a route handler in the Express framework for Node. Listing 4 is a fine example of functional programming in that it allows for the clean definition of exactly what is required for mapping a route and handling requests and responses — although it might be argued that manipulating the response object within the function body is a side effect.

Now consider the functional programming notion of functions that return functions. This is less commonly encountered than functions as arguments. Listing 5 has an example from a common React pattern, where the fat-arrow syntax is chained.

The purpose of the above is to create an event handler that will accept the field in question, and then the event. This is useful because you can apply the same handleChange to multiple fields. In short, the same handler is usable on multiple fields. Listing 5 is an example of a curried function. In any case, the idea is that when you have functions that return functions, you can chain together calls to them, in a more flexible way than creating a single function with multiple arguments.

The preceding examples offer a hands-on understanding of functional programming in a focused context, but functional programming is intended to drive greater benefits to programming in the large. Put another way, functional programming is intended to create cleaner, more resilient, large-scale systems. The React team has noted that the more concise functional style of component offers benefits that compound as interface architecture grows larger.

Another system that makes use of functional programming heavily is ReactiveX. Large-scale systems built on the kind of event streams that ReactiveX uses can benefit from decoupled software component interaction.

Finally, an issue that is not necessarily part of functional programming as a paradigm, but is very important to pay attention to when doing functional programming, is that of variable scope and context. In JavaScript, context specifically means what the this keyword resolves to. In the case of the JavaScript arrow operator, this refers to the enclosing context. A function defined with the traditional syntax receives its own context.

Event handlers on DOM objects can take advantage of this fact to ensure that the this keyword refers to the element being handled. Scope refers to the variable horizon, that is, what variables are visible.

This is why such functions are referred to as closures. The term means the function is enclosed within its containing scope. This is important to remember: Such anonymous functions have full access to the variables in scope.



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