The Beauty of Functional Code


Book Description

This Festschrift has been published in honor of Rinus Plasmeijer, to celebrate the combined occasion of his 61st birthday and the 25th Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages, IFL 2013, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in August 2013. Rinus Plasmeijer was the main designer of the lazy functional programming language "Clean" and has always been the leader of the associated research team. He has played a decisive role in making the Radboud University of Nijmegen an important center of research in functional programming by organizing and hosting the first few IFL symposia in Nijmegen. This Festschrift contains 19 scientific essays written by former PhD students of Rinus Plasmeijer and researchers in the field of functional programming who have collaborated with him. The authors write about the influence the beauty of functional programming has had or still has on their work.




Grokking Functional Programming


Book Description

There’s no need to fear going functional! This friendly, lively, and engaging guide is perfect for any perplexed programmer. It lays out the principles of functional programming in a simple and concise way that will help you grok what FP is really all about. In Grokking Functional Programming you will learn: Designing with functions and types instead of objects Programming with pure functions and immutable values Writing concurrent programs using the functional style Testing functional programs Multiple learning approaches to help you grok each new concept If you’ve ever found yourself rolling your eyes at functional programming, this is the book for you. Open up Grokking Functional Programming and you’ll find functional ideas mapped onto what you already know as an object-oriented programmer. The book focuses on practical aspects from page one. Hands-on examples apply functional principles to everyday programming tasks like concurrency, error handling, and improving readability. Plus, puzzles and exercises let you think and practice what you're learning. You’ll soon reach an amazing “aha” moment and start seeing code in a completely new way. About the technology Finally, there’s an easy way to learn functional programming! This unique book starts with the familiar ideas of OOP and introduces FP step-by-step using relevant examples, engaging exercises, and lots of illustrations. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll start seeing software tasks from this valuable new perspective. About the book Grokking Functional Programming introduces functional programming to imperative developers. You’ll start with small, comfortable coding tasks that expose basic concepts like writing pure functions and working with immutable data. Along the way, you’ll learn how to write code that eliminates common bugs caused by complex distributed state. You’ll also explore the FP approach to IO, concurrency, and data streaming. By the time you finish, you’ll be writing clean functional code that’s easy to understand, test, and maintain. What's inside Designing with functions and types instead of objects Programming with pure functions and immutable values Writing concurrent programs using the functional style Testing functional programs About the reader For developers who know an object-oriented language. Examples in Java and Scala. About the author Michal Plachta is an experienced software developer who regularly speaks and writes about creating maintainable applications. Table of Contents Part 1 The functional toolkit 1 Learning functional programming 2 Pure functions 3 Immutable values 4 Functions as values Part 2 Functional programs 5 Sequential programs 6 Error handling 7 Requirements as types 8 IO as values 9 Streams as values 10 Concurrent programs Part 3 Applied functional programming 11 Designing functional programs 12 Testing functional programs




Geek Sublime


Book Description

The nonfiction debut from the author of the international bestseller Sacred Games about the surprising overlap between writing and computer coding Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new book, his first work of nonfiction, he searches for the connections between the worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? Can we ascribe beauty to the craft of writing code? Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an "Indian Mafia" in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, Geek Sublime is both an idiosyncratic history of coding and a fascinating meditation on the writer's art. Part literary essay, part technology story, and part memoir, it is an engrossing, original, and heady book of sweeping ideas.




Composing Software


Book Description

All software design is composition: the act of breaking complex problems down into smaller problems and composing those solutions. Most developers have a limited understanding of compositional techniques. It's time for that to change.In "Composing Software", Eric Elliott shares the fundamentals of composition, including both function composition and object composition, and explores them in the context of JavaScript. The book covers the foundations of both functional programming and object oriented programming to help the reader better understand how to build and structure complex applications using simple building blocks.You'll learn: Functional programmingObject compositionHow to work with composite data structuresClosuresHigher order functionsFunctors (e.g., array.map)Monads (e.g., promises)TransducersLensesAll of this in the context of JavaScript, the most used programming language in the world. But the learning doesn't stop at JavaScript. You'll be able to apply these lessons to any language. This book is about the timeless principles of software composition and its lessons will outlast the hot languages and frameworks of today. Unlike most programming books, this one may still be relevant 20 years from now.This book began life as a popular blog post series that attracted hundreds of thousands of readers and influenced the way software is built at many high growth tech startups and fortune 500 companies




Advanced R


Book Description

An Essential Reference for Intermediate and Advanced R Programmers Advanced R presents useful tools and techniques for attacking many types of R programming problems, helping you avoid mistakes and dead ends. With more than ten years of experience programming in R, the author illustrates the elegance, beauty, and flexibility at the heart of R. The book develops the necessary skills to produce quality code that can be used in a variety of circumstances. You will learn: The fundamentals of R, including standard data types and functions Functional programming as a useful framework for solving wide classes of problems The positives and negatives of metaprogramming How to write fast, memory-efficient code This book not only helps current R users become R programmers but also shows existing programmers what’s special about R. Intermediate R programmers can dive deeper into R and learn new strategies for solving diverse problems while programmers from other languages can learn the details of R and understand why R works the way it does.




Functional Programming in Scala


Book Description

Summary Functional Programming in Scala is a serious tutorial for programmers looking to learn FP and apply it to the everyday business of coding. The book guides readers from basic techniques to advanced topics in a logical, concise, and clear progression. In it, you'll find concrete examples and exercises that open up the world of functional programming. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Functional programming (FP) is a style of software development emphasizing functions that don't depend on program state. Functional code is easier to test and reuse, simpler to parallelize, and less prone to bugs than other code. Scala is an emerging JVM language that offers strong support for FP. Its familiar syntax and transparent interoperability with Java make Scala a great place to start learning FP. About the Book Functional Programming in Scala is a serious tutorial for programmers looking to learn FP and apply it to their everyday work. The book guides readers from basic techniques to advanced topics in a logical, concise, and clear progression. In it, you'll find concrete examples and exercises that open up the world of functional programming. This book assumes no prior experience with functional programming. Some prior exposure to Scala or Java is helpful. What's Inside Functional programming concepts The whys and hows of FP How to write multicore programs Exercises and checks for understanding About the Authors Paul Chiusano and Rúnar Bjarnason are recognized experts in functional programming with Scala and are core contributors to the Scalaz library. Table of Contents PART 1 INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING What is functional programming? Getting started with functional programming in Scala Functional data structures Handling errors without exceptions Strictness and laziness Purely functional state PART 2 FUNCTIONAL DESIGN AND COMBINATOR LIBRARIES Purely functional parallelism Property-based testing Parser combinators PART 3 COMMON STRUCTURES IN FUNCTIONAL DESIGN Monoids Monads Applicative and traversable functors PART 4 EFFECTS AND I/O External effects and I/O Local effects and mutable state Stream processing and incremental I/O




Grokking Simplicity


Book Description

Distributed across servers, difficult to test, and resistant to modification--modern software is complex. Grokking Simplicity is a friendly, practical guide that will change the way you approach software design and development. It introduces a unique approach to functional programming that explains why certain features of software are prone to complexity, and teaches you the functional techniques you can use to simplify these systems so that they''re easier to test and debug. Available in PDF (ePub, kindle, and liveBook formats coming soon). about the technology Even experienced developers struggle with software systems that sprawl across distributed servers and APIs, are filled with redundant code, and are difficult to reliably test and modify. Adopting ways of thinking derived from functional programming can help you design and refactor your codebase in ways that reduce complexity, rather than encouraging it. Grokking Simplicity lays out how to use functional programming in a professional environment to write a codebase that''s easier to test and reuse, has fewer bugs, and is better at handling the asynchronous nature of distributed systems. about the book In Grokking Simplicity, you''ll learn techniques and, more importantly, a mindset that will help you tackle common problems that arise when software gets complex. Veteran functional programmer Eric Normand guides you to a crystal-clear understanding of why certain features of modern software are so prone to complexity and introduces you to the functional techniques you can use to simplify these systems so that they''re easier to read, test, and debug. Through hands-on examples, exercises, and numerous self-assessments, you''ll learn to organize your code for maximum reusability and internalize methods to keep unwanted complexity out of your codebase. Regardless of the language you''re using, the ways of thinking in this book will help recognize problematic code and tame even the most complex software. what''s inside Apply functional programming principles to reduce codebase complexity Work with data transformation pipelines for code that''s easier to test and reuse Tools for modeling time to simplify asynchrony 60 exercises and 100 questions to test your knowledge about the reader For experienced programmers. Examples are in JavaScript. about the author Eric Normand has been a functional programmer since 2001 and has been teaching functional programming online and in person since 2007. Visit LispCast.com to see more of his credentials.




Functional JavaScript


Book Description

How can you overcome JavaScript language oddities and unsafe features? With this book, you’ll learn how to create code that’s beautiful, safe, and simple to understand and test by using JavaScript’s functional programming support. Author Michael Fogus shows you how to apply functional-style concepts with Underscore.js, a JavaScript library that facilitates functional programming techniques. Sample code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/funjs/book-source. Fogus helps you think in a functional way to help you minimize complexity in the programs you build. If you’re a JavaScript programmer hoping to learn functional programming techniques, or a functional programmer looking to learn JavaScript, this book is the ideal introduction. Use applicative programming techniques with first-class functions Understand how and why you might leverage variable scoping and closures Delve into higher-order functions—and learn how they take other functions as arguments for maximum advantage Explore ways to compose new functions from existing functions Get around JavaScript’s limitations for using recursive functions Reduce, hide, or eliminate the footprint of state change in your programs Practice flow-based programming with chains and functional pipelines Discover how to code without using classes




Functional Programming For Dummies


Book Description

Your guide to the functional programming paradigm Functional programming mainly sees use in math computations, including those used in Artificial Intelligence and gaming. This programming paradigm makes algorithms used for math calculations easier to understand and provides a concise method of coding algorithms by people who aren't developers. Current books on the market have a significant learning curve because they're written for developers, by developers—until now. Functional Programming for Dummies explores the differences between the pure (as represented by the Haskell language) and impure (as represented by the Python language) approaches to functional programming for readers just like you. The pure approach is best suited to researchers who have no desire to create production code but do need to test algorithms fully and demonstrate their usefulness to peers. The impure approach is best suited to production environments because it's possible to mix coding paradigms in a single application to produce a result more quickly. Functional Programming For Dummies uses this two-pronged approach to give you an all-in-one approach to a coding methodology that can otherwise be hard to grasp. Learn pure and impure when it comes to coding Dive into the processes that most functional programmers use to derive, analyze and prove the worth of algorithms Benefit from examples that are provided in both Python and Haskell Glean the expertise of an expert author who has written some of the market-leading programming books to date If you’re ready to massage data to understand how things work in new ways, you’ve come to the right place!




Functional Programming in C++


Book Description

Summary Functional Programming in C++ teaches developers the practical side of functional programming and the tools that C++ provides to develop software in the functional style. This in-depth guide is full of useful diagrams that help you understand FP concepts and begin to think functionally. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Well-written code is easier to test and reuse, simpler to parallelize, and less error prone. Mastering the functional style of programming can help you tackle the demands of modern apps and will lead to simpler expression of complex program logic, graceful error handling, and elegant concurrency. C++ supports FP with templates, lambdas, and other core language features, along with many parts of the STL. About the Book Functional Programming in C++ helps you unleash the functional side of your brain, as you gain a powerful new perspective on C++ coding. You'll discover dozens of examples, diagrams, and illustrations that break down the functional concepts you can apply in C++, including lazy evaluation, function objects and invokables, algebraic data types, and more. As you read, you'll match FP techniques with practical scenarios where they offer the most benefit. What's inside Writing safer code with no performance penalties Explicitly handling errors through the type system Extending C++ with new control structures Composing tasks with DSLs About the Reader Written for developers with two or more years of experience coding in C++. About the Author Ivan Čukić is a core developer at KDE and has been coding in C++ since 1998. He teaches modern C++ and functional programming at the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Belgrade. Table of Contents Introduction to functional programming Getting started with functional programming Function objects Creating new functions from the old ones Purity: Avoiding mutable state Lazy evaluation Ranges Functional data structures Algebraic data types and pattern matching Monads Template metaprogramming Functional design for concurrent systems Testing and debugging