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Episode 4: Functional Programming - You're probably already doing it

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Manage episode 488754284 series 3660315
Content provided by Jim McQuillan & Wolf and Jim McQuillan. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jim McQuillan & Wolf and Jim McQuillan or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Show notes and things to think about:

  1. Functional programing isn't academic. It isn't overwhelming. It isn't impossible to use. It isn't inapplicable to ordinary problems like the ones you're solving right now.
  2. You can use functional techniques in almost any modern programming language. In fact, you probably already are.
  3. Main pillars of FP:
    1. Pure functions (no side-effects)
    2. Functions are first-class objects (you can pass them as arguments, you can return them as results, you can store them in lists or any other data-structure)
    3. Data is immutable by default
    4. FP languages often provide powerful pattern matching syntax (didn't mention this much in the episode other than briefly noting Python's new match statement)
    5. A couple of things not mentioned: in FP, your code is more about what you want, not about how to get it. That stack of functions for the sales data example looks declarative, not imperative.
    6. A couple of other things not mentioned: recursion and lazy evaluation. Not exclusive to FP, but very often available in functional languages.
  4. Papers and explanations about monads might be unreadable, but you're already using them and you already know how they work.
  5. Using FP techniques appropriately can make your code easier to test, harder to break, and possibly even prettier to look at.
  6. There are places in your code right now that you can make better right now with FP. Do it!

Links:

  • We mentioned a ton of languages. Most of them have easy to find home pages so I'm not going to list out all the links; but there are a couple of obscure ones

Hosts:
Jim McQuillan can be reached at [email protected]
Wolf can be reached at [email protected]
Follow us on Mastodon: @[email protected]
If you have feedback for us, please send it to [email protected]
Theme music:
Dawn by nuer self, from the album Digital Sky

  continue reading

6 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 488754284 series 3660315
Content provided by Jim McQuillan & Wolf and Jim McQuillan. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jim McQuillan & Wolf and Jim McQuillan or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Show notes and things to think about:

  1. Functional programing isn't academic. It isn't overwhelming. It isn't impossible to use. It isn't inapplicable to ordinary problems like the ones you're solving right now.
  2. You can use functional techniques in almost any modern programming language. In fact, you probably already are.
  3. Main pillars of FP:
    1. Pure functions (no side-effects)
    2. Functions are first-class objects (you can pass them as arguments, you can return them as results, you can store them in lists or any other data-structure)
    3. Data is immutable by default
    4. FP languages often provide powerful pattern matching syntax (didn't mention this much in the episode other than briefly noting Python's new match statement)
    5. A couple of things not mentioned: in FP, your code is more about what you want, not about how to get it. That stack of functions for the sales data example looks declarative, not imperative.
    6. A couple of other things not mentioned: recursion and lazy evaluation. Not exclusive to FP, but very often available in functional languages.
  4. Papers and explanations about monads might be unreadable, but you're already using them and you already know how they work.
  5. Using FP techniques appropriately can make your code easier to test, harder to break, and possibly even prettier to look at.
  6. There are places in your code right now that you can make better right now with FP. Do it!

Links:

  • We mentioned a ton of languages. Most of them have easy to find home pages so I'm not going to list out all the links; but there are a couple of obscure ones

Hosts:
Jim McQuillan can be reached at [email protected]
Wolf can be reached at [email protected]
Follow us on Mastodon: @[email protected]
If you have feedback for us, please send it to [email protected]
Theme music:
Dawn by nuer self, from the album Digital Sky

  continue reading

6 episodes

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