Functional Programming in JavaScript

by Dan Mantyla

Unlock the powers of functional programming hidden within JavaScript to build smarter, cleaner, and more reliable web apps About This Book Discover what functional programming is, why it's effective, and how it's used in JavaScript Understand and optimize JavaScript's hidden potential as a true functional language Explore the best coding practices for real-world applications Who This Book Is For

If you are a JavaScript developer interested in learning functional programming, looking for the quantum leap towards mastering the JavaScript language, or just want to become a better programmer in general, then this book is ideal for you. It is aimed at programmers involved in developing reactive frontend apps, server-side apps that wrangle with reliability and concurrency, and everything in between.

What You Will Learn Separate core logic from the program state to write more maintainable code Replace ugly for loops with pure functions and recursion Simplify code with method chains of pure, higher-order functions Create more reliable code with closures and immutable data Explore lazy evaluation strategies and what they can accomplish Develop more powerful applications with currying and function composition Use promises, functors, monads, and function factories In Detail

This is a fast-paced guide that will help you to write real-world applications by utilizing a wide range of functional techniques and styles.

The book first explores the core concepts of functional programming common to all functional languages, with examples of their use in JavaScript. It's followed by a comprehensive roundup of functional programming libraries for JavaScript that minimizes the burden of digging deep into JavaScript to expose a set of tools that makes functional programming not just possible but highly convenient. The book then rounds off with an overview of methods to effectively use and mix functional programming with object-oriented programming.

Genres: Programming, Nonfiction

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 25, 2015

Reviews

[John Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on functional programming. Discusses category theory and has practical tips towards the end on optimizing functions. Check it out!

[Vlad Bezden · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a great book. Very concise and up to the point. Dan is using real JavaScript code to show how everything works, so you can see how everything works under the hood, instead of rely on existing libraries. He also provides real examples. What I also like that he is not saying that FP is the only way of doing programming, but he says that both OOP and FP has their own purpose and it's very hard to write whole application in FP, he provides real example how to use them both.
Another good thing about this book, that he is not going deep to theory, but he gives you enough to understand concept and for everything he provides examples. This book is only 133 pages, but I think Dan was able to cover all area of FP.
If you are absolutely new to FP or JavaScript, then this book might not be for you.

[Tadd Giles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly written, low quality

The prose is very verbose, unfocused, and filled with spelling errors. I purchased the Ebook which is very poorly formatted with bad line breaks in the code examples and lots of random blank pages throughout. Perhaps with some tight editing it could be significantly improved, but in its current state the Ebook is practically unreadable. I'm really disappointed because I need to learn about this topic.