Learning Functional Programming with JavaScript - Anjana Vakil - JSUnconf

[@recursiveackermann9819]

This is possibly one of the best 30 minutes of my life as a software engineer. Thank you.

[@ToveriJuri]

She does a very good job at introducing the very basic concept behind FP and she's easy to listen to. Excellent video.

[@kierranpurden2150]

Agreed, she actually makes so much sense.

[@Helvanic]

As a programmer that already knows about those subjects, I wish somebody would have explained them to me that way the first time I looked into it. Great talk.

[@howardlam6181]

I am now a tutor of a python course so seeing how the others present these kinds of topics should help me understand how to make it more approachable.

[@valen8560]

true, have learnt all these already, but the hard way

[@balanrouge1227]

Hi, how would you describe the difference between a function and a method from the object oriented paradigm? Just trying to understand the functional programming mindset :) cheers

[@punkgrl325]

@@balanrouge1227 So the way it works is, a method is a function that's declared within an object. I guess in Java, all the functions would be methods, because all the code in a program is contained within an object class. This isn't the case in Javascript though. In Javascript, you can have functions that are independent of objects, so they wouldn't be methods. The in-built functions in Javascript are technically methods though, as they're usually part of some type of core protoype object within the language itself ( string.concat(), array.push(), etc). In object-oriented Javascript, the functions would be methods following the object-oriented paradigm, but in functional programming, the functions are usually self-contained and return some sort of reusable code or instructions for the program (like how the functional components in React work). So for the most part, you can say methods are a type of function, but not all functions are methods. I hope that helps in some way :)

[@euihyunan3768]

This is why i like listening to students presentations. You actually learn more from the students because they understand what we probably had a hard time in.

[@madwilliamflint]

I've been programming for almost 40 years. That's the best explanation of map/reduce I've ever seen.

[@MADPURO]

what are your main language(s)?

[@80amnesia]

Fortran, Cobol, Algol and Altair BASIC

[@sammokkabasi8957]

whoa.

[@cwmoser]

Tom Pitman's Tiny Basic ... along with Fortran, Cobol, PL/1, and Algol.

[@ibuprofen303]

I do Sinclair Spectrum basic. With a rubber keypad. I've just finished yet another "Breakout" game and I'm currently saving it to cassette.

[@Codetutor-DemystifyCoding]

I am a programmer, I know and use the concepts that she is talking about in my daily work. But I was still hooked to the way she was explaining these things. The fact that she doesn't come from typical programming back ground is something that makes her communication her USP. Very well explained!!!

[@vim6284]

She's not like a bunch of pedantic dudes who talk around and pretend as if they are intelligent, but she thoroughly understands the core and generously and effectively delivers her knowledge. I wish she was my professor.

[@i3130002]

Honestly I waited for her to explain why to use mutable method, the reason is to be able to shallow compare objects so react for example, be able to detect object changes!

[@balazsorosz6845]

soooooooooooo true

[@RexGalilae]

I mean, she's at the stage where she's experienced enough to have formed an intuitive understanding yet too new to have formed a superiority complex over it

[@jotang3694]

I couldn't agree more

[@Eltramicst]

"About 6 months ago, I knew nothing about functional programming and very little about Javascript," she says while giving a talk about functional programming to an audience of programmers at a Javascript conference.. That is insanely impressive.

[@ДианаДиана-с1г]

I've been learning JS for 4 months and now I am doubting my progress =(

[@Chillycloth]

@@ДианаДиана-с1г use it with HTML and CSS. Easier to learn it

[@ゾカリクゾ]

if its the first language you learn, take it easy, don't expect to be super quick. once you learn one language, learning others will be so much easier. ​@@ДианаДиана-с1г

[@02minutesvideography20]

Great wisdom ! She accept she don't know a lot but still confidently delivered what she know. Appreciated!

[@Rajdeep369]

she's a great communicator

[@ajaymenon0]

I think the background of being an English teacher really shows how she's so comfortable with her speech.

[@stopthrm]

yes she is. What's ironic is that I used to feel like I could write and communicate very clearly but after being a programmer for a few years, my written communication has slipped backwards.

[@Natasha-to1mh]

@@stopthrm programming requires you to have a more abstract/logical mindset sort of like whats needed in mathematics and engineering professions. I found myself switching a bit in personalities/values when I devote more time programming within a timeframe compared to when I devote more time in music.

[@venvilhenrydsilva8354]

Well, she's a philosophy major! also an English teacher.

[@florinteodorescu5493]

She was an ESL teacher. If you're shy or boring, the students will eat you alive.

[@iamcisneros]

Completely cool at all aspects... how she explains, how she interacts with the audience, how she managed saying "i dont feel qualified to talk about non-blocking, promises..." and how she says "fight fight fight" haha the best :)

[@paullikethesaint]

Good talk. She's an excellent communicator which I'm sure has a lot to do with being other things prior to being a software engineer.

[@lokeshbramhe9458]

She does a very good job at introducing the very basic concept behind FP and she's easy to listen to. Excellent video, she's a great communicator

[@pablofonseca8867]

Just a tip, in ECMAScript Standard you can use Object.freeze() to throw an error if someone tries to change the object, even if the object is a constant array and someone is trying to change the value of the memory address.

[@pb9405]

Best explanation I've heard so far, an important advantage of FP that she didn't mention is that it becomes much easier to test your code (unit testing), because there is no shared state.

[@hiankun]

Never thought that one day I will get the concept of functional programming from a JS conference video. Great talk and explanation.

[@djgreyjoy1495]

A philosophical step back to remind us what programming is really about. The objects don't allow us to see the forest. Nice done!

[@JohnDavidHarbison]

Such a good job! I had no intention of watching the entire video - but here I am 30 mins later, and I would totally have watched more. Great intro that has me seriously considering these design patterns for my future JS programs!

[@cyberprodigy]

John David Harbison same happened to me. :)

[@profmo]

I appreciate that programmers are finally embracing the virtues of functional programming. Back in the 80s and 90s, functional programming was seen as esoteric. Now it is mainstream. I hope this means that within 20 years, programming using higher-order type theory will become main stream.

[@aduonye]

Wow! What a clear and concise explanation, she carried us along the entire discussion with her presentation, and now I get a hang of functional programming and understanding these buzz words like a pure function, mutability, closure, structural sharing, and more.

[@viditkothari9796]

From the future: 2019 This video is so much relevant today (if not more than ever), specially with React trending, these coding style, techniques are so widely used and benefitted from. Also, her explanation are so clear & concise. This is my 5th watch since 2016 :)

[@HeyWilliamCheng]

follow your idea，I'm finishing first time!

[@tack3132]

The best explanation of what functional programming is that I have heard. Thanks a lot, Anjana.

[@boxherold1177]

This was the best explanation I have ever seen on this. It’s nice to have someone actually explain things instead of trying to show off how much jargon they know

[@NicholasEymann]

This is one of the best intros to functional programming I have ever seen!

[@sleeplessdev7204]

By teaching a subject you recently learned, it's more fresh in your mind, you have simpler examples and gotcha's to share, and you don't get bogged down in all the details and exceptions to the rule that an expert in the field might. I wish more things were taught this way.

[@rorycawley]

Best talk on functional programming I've yet seen. Great to see it on JS too!

[@zwdxff5493]

I have done many researchers about functional programming in JS. She could explain concepts clearly. This one is the best. 1 function is everything. 2 side affect is really clear.

[@Nachiketa_TheCutiePie]

She is so expressive and I understood things which I couldn't understand before.

[@shaswatkumarparida6179]

I am also a beginner to the advanced concepts of javascript. Such a comprehensive lecture.

[@michaelpritchard2350]

This is great! I am learning JS, and the functional paradigm fits in exactly with what I want my code to do: Input-function-output. Perfect!

[@anvarsaidov8964]

You feel like fish a pond in that audience. All discussed is still relative in 2022, seen them all used in my current project. It's been a pleasure to watch and learn from you.

[@Perhelion1]

I've never seen a "programmer" talking so lequit and expressive.

[@김정영-j4d]

I didn't search anything about javascript but I have luckily watched this video and it makes me deeper understanding of javascript. and also it so great presentation.

[@dmaMsk]

This is really just an introduction, but I couldn't like it since the presenter is super energetic and her manner to articulate and explain things just have captivated me :) Good talk! Way to go, Anjana Vakil!

[@hfontanez98]

She got my thumbs up the moment she started talking about the problems with mutability. You'll be surprised how many people still believe that immutability is bad instead of the other way around.

[@dtsleite]

I´m not an english native but I can understand each word she says! Great!

[@crossfitbilly]

Anjana is an excellent speaker. SHe made several concepts quite easy to understand, that is a gift. She should do this more. I hope she does.

[@KresnaPermana]

She's pretty good as a speaker and sure it's well explained! thanks

[@jvwdigital]

awesome awesome presentation. As a newbie, this was so insightful. Vakil's ability to communicate what she knows, along with her ability to know what she doesn't know, made her an extremely reliable authority on the subject of FP. I can't believe I watch the whole thing. Great presentation.

[@sunnyhours84]

Wow, amazing sum up of all these techniques. You can tell she has been a teacher. Tough crowd though.

[@gr5791]

Watching this video made me realize I've been doing functional programming all this time... Really great explanation and insight!

[@aldinlapinig]

wow... how did you manage to explain things in a very simplistic manner?? Great job on the presentation! Keep it up...

[@carolinec8084]

I could listen to Anjana speak all day, such an engaging speaker making JS FUN (dare I say?!)

[@christerjohanzzon]

3 years later, this is still brilliant! A really good explanation that I am going to refer to.

[@Killofamas]

6 years after, still is !

[@jewel.barman]

She's a god to all the coders who can't explain what they're doing even when they're doing the correct thing.

[@viksam009]

She is so easy to listen to. Its like listening to a radio jockey.

[@mollymccarronproduct]

I am new to JS and coming from an object oriented Ruby background I was struggling to understand the 'why' of functional programming. This video brought so much clarity! Thanks so much Anjana! Such an entertaining and easy to follow talk!

[@elirane85]

Awesome video. I just wanted to add that it's kinda funny how Functional Programming is considered a "new" trend when in fact it existed way way before OOP.

[@adithyanow]

i don't know anything about programming and i was watching the whole thing ..!!!!..........she is awesome

[@bradv5982]

I'm not a JS developer, but I still found this talk really enlightening, and can translate the methods in this talk into other languages without any problems. Now excuse me, I have the sudden urge to get a subway sandwich

[@BabyBearRudy]

She was really good at explaining this. Not many resources out there elaborate on these ideas and simplify them the way she did. Great job, you can tell she is an educator at heart.

[@EdwardVarner]

Great into to FP and using it in JS! It's a shame the room was so dead, but she soldiered on anyway.

[@wullxz]

She talked about face expressions of her audience. Maybe they were just too startled by her good communicative skills and by her amazing talk to laugh or say something ^^

[@LuisGuillermoMoreno]

Edward Varner empty? I can see almost 600k attendants here

[@jeffery_tang]

The ending was pretty funny

[@ISHANKHANDELWALBCE]

Great talk. The way she explained fp so elegantly makes me want to be her student.

[@vicsar]

21:07 - Tough crowd tonight... is this mic on? (She did a great job)

[@ducamvinh4462]

yeah that's what i was thinking the whole time, what a dead crowd, she's amazing

[@gpnryou]

@@ducamvinh4462 Yes, she did a great job. But as I see it she seemed overexcited and that was evident to that specific audience

[@LanguageSkillz]

Agreed, quieter audience but she raced into every highlight she loved. They're good ones! I so appreciate how she distinguished their rescue features, in a cauldron of bubbling object staging.

[@darranoshea4824]

@@LanguageSkillz You can't really see the audience's faces, but I'd like to think they all have pretty big smiles every time Anjana makes a joke!

[@ajayhemanth]

She was great !!! And also she was humble enough to say that she was not qualified to talk about certain topics, which made her even greater ...

[@Vaibik]

I am glad I stumbled upon this video. I would watch it again. Informative and enjoyable at the same time. Personally a fan of FP more than OOP. She's a Great communicator! Should become a teacher. The audience seems to be on the opposite spectrum of the scale of sense of humour. Personally I liked more because I am also an Indian origin person (from the same sub-culture) and sometimes the young (and old) Indians outside India are not so great communicators. She is totally breaking that stereotype. I also connect with my audience like this and sometimes I face such tough crowd as well. :D

[@pitpotputpet]

Pretty sure she made it to the end without saying "functions are a 1st class citizen" once. Bravo 👏🏻

[@leeritenour]

8:14 People say that she was once a Kungfu master.

[@Mfbzai]

Lol

[@lailanashim274]

Haha nice catch!

[@davidkim7410]

Can’t quite read all the comment, but I think people all find her easy to listen to. Although I did rewind and playback a few times while watching, speeded up 2 times faster in the rear, I did enjoy her presentation very much.

[@Ganesh-Shrestha]

Awesome, nice presentation on intro to functional programming and a great transformation from English Teacher to Computational Linguist turn now as Software Developer. Great Job !!!

[@abnormalmindset]

I remember watching her lecture about a year ago as a newbie to Functional Programming. Now that I have some knowledge in FP I really enjoyed her lecture.

[@micjakes1]

Thank you for defining a function. Takes the smart to make things simple.

[@pierreafoutou7368]

She has this ability to explain things very well 👌

[@joemoorhouse276]

as a junior developer fluent in ruby and beginning to learn javascript, this is an awesome video

[@agentsmidt3209]

Great speaker.

[@sashamc309]

this presentation was a gem at the time. I didn't realize how important this was for my understanding of FP in JavaScript, along with many other articles and videos. Just learning about mutations, what is Array.prototype.reduce, what is Array.prototype .map - explaining these in simple language is tremendously helpful for people trying to get into modern functional JS.

[@AmbuSreedharan]

Your teaching experience really shines through the talk. Great stuff!

[@helixobscura451]

Really engaging talk, she's able to make programming talks less of a bore.

[@vim6284]

wow.. just... wow... I've seen a whole bunch of videos on youtube and subscribed all the channels related to programming but couldn't get a decent concept of this functional programming stuff. I was even thinking that, maybe these evil programmers intentionally manufactured this fake concept of FP, which means nothing in reality, in order to waste my time. After watching this video, however, it just blew my mind. I'll even say this video changed both my life and my future career as I'll set aside this OOP which gives me tons of headaches and eager to become a FP programmer from now on. Thank you so much, you just had a huge impact on one's life.

[@lukasjost44]

I am very curious now. Has your life been changed? :D

[@shahhussain3134]

i watched this video years ago during my graduation, and I fell in love with functional programming. ahh that sweet code!

[@LanguageSkillz]

I very much appreciate Anjana's wonderment at Functional Programming approaches to organizing and executing JS code, and her explicit experiences implementing alternative strategies to for-looping. The relief was so apparent. 'Zaiste' has a nice Functional Programming overview as well, although it does not come up cohesively in KZbin. His address of predicate functions, as boolean, as filter, as closure check, prepped me so kindly for this lecture, and her mention of the mori library sounds like a superb option after delving into some _lodash. JS presents a most-robust programming language, and Node (and/or its insights) seem to free it from much object-oriented mayhem it can fling. Happy to look up your work on Node since this, AV. Can't express enough how refreshing this has been, especially after regarding some D. Crockford highlights of features that've been outright forced or misapplied, perhaps due to programmers' depth of experiences with other languages and extents of ineptitude regarding how to play to JS strengths. Yet JS is now a most vast body of internet code and with such varied approaches having been validated by several rounds of practices/schools of thought already. Some can sprawl outright Loch ness tentacles, and coming across legacy code is ever a thing. The Functional JS approach is also a favorite of mine, extending that single lamda strength to center function-as-object and within a more amazing nodular mesh.

[@bslndhamlegal3687]

What are you talking about ?

[@neverneverlandmysocialdile7912]

Totally agree 💯

[@neverneverlandmysocialdile7912]

@@bslndhamlegal3687 she's talking (code, if I may, and clearly this gal is approaching if not yet already accomplished greatness using these variables yet to be learned.)

[@TusharJade101]

She is one of the best explainers I have ever seen

[@karanpadda]

i feel motivated, i think we need more women programmers for sure.

[@osamagamal495]

hell yeah!!

[@pinxieanime]

Indeed!

[@cgoodwin2127]

Lucid. Concise. And can be played @ 2X without losing comprehension!

[@larryd9577]

This auditorium felt so familiar the whole time... It is the one I sit every week in. 😂 It's the Geomatikum in Hamburg.

[@expertsconcepts6708]

I don't think she is learned these in 6 months, as I am programmer for the last 1 decade and I may not deliver this knowledge in this way... !! simply awesome.

[@jsnadrian]

really cool talk - like how sincerely excited she is! im still pretty horrible at functional thinking, but that's on me.

[@diamond-iamthemaincharacter]

Im from Japan. Although Im not used to hearing English presentation, I could fully understand the concept of FP because her explanation was amazing. Thanks a lot

[@PRINCE-XII-A]

Her voice is so good 😍

[@sunnysheikh1090]

grate communicating power.....i m also a student and has started my career its very helpful special thanks to uniconf for providing her platform and allow us to hear her....and thank to anjana also

[@Roshambo3]

Amazing presentation. This gave me a ton of “ah-ha” moments. She explained it really well

[@ajayboro4514]

I was conquering javascript functional programming on the freeCodeCamp curriculum and my mind stuck at it then I remember this video which I watched a couple of months ago however, I didn't understand then. Today I have watched it again and it makes sense to me what is functional programming is about. Thank you Anjana Vakil for this wonderfully simple explanation. It helped noobies like me.

[@kartikkalia01]

Hey I'm learning JS for web dev, I've previously solved some DSA problems on hackerank. So should I go for freecodecamp? Or anything else, please suggest.

[@candidodmv]

Congrats for this amazing presentation.

[@fazalmehmood6802]

As a full stack developer based in Norway, none of the concepts she explained were new to me but I did it anyways because she is such a great speaker. I wish I could meet her in real life and exchange ideas.

[@iocusdigital6534]

"I am just starting learning JS" -> speaking at JS Conf 23:43 "I am here thanks to diversity ticket" -> meritocracy 28:40 "Non-blocking concurrency and Promises are all things that I don't feel qualified to talk about right here. I would love to turn that question over to the audience. Anybody want to respond?" -> still meritocracy .... at this point everything is possible. I can go in a 3 michelin stars restaurant and teach them how i am learning to make apple pie.

[@andrewilliams1974]

Anjana definitely had my attention. I learned a lot from her and she is easy to listen to. Great communicator!

[@kasvith]

Damn I can watch this all the day

[@jlopekkos2164]

I've understood everything, it's not a great talk , its the best talk I've seen

[@adagas-caouchristian7875]

Great talk. I'm a webdev rookie and since I'm used to functional programming in other languages I was wondering how one could use this paradigm properly in JS. Thanks a lot.

[@piusvictor8780]

She is an Amazing Concept Presenter...👏👏

[@ashishjha9262]

directly watch from 4:56 :)

[@USONOFAV]

You can use OOP amd FP together in different granularity. Use OOP to identify boundaries in the architecture and use FP inside those boundaries.

[@p.z.8355]

why is the hype about functional programming though ? why is persistency & immutability & pure functions good ?

[@paceaux]

ohhh man. this is awesome. It's nice to know that I've already been writing in a more functional style. But reading the raw math-like explanations of functional programming, I didn't really get it. This is a really helpful explanation of exactly how functional programming works in a JS conference. She deserves all the upvotes.

[@wynwilliams6977]

Anjana Vakil a fucking awesome speaker, got my kid really into it

[@nurudeenkarim994]

you ruin everything with the F-word. But i agree. great speaker.

[@wynwilliams6977]

Nurudeen Karim F-word? you mean 'fuck'? go on say it three times fast it will make you feel good ;)

[@nurudeenkarim994]

Wyn Williams LOL

[@luisluiscunha]

Great presentation. I almost missed giving her a like, but than I saw the 1.6K envious people who wish they could do a presentation like hers.

[@amypellegrini1732]

Thanks to his talk I realised that I was already doing functional programming without knowing it.

[@josephwong2832]

great talk. love how JSConf has grown since then

[@HassanSani]

I am really surprise this video has 215 unlikes, was it some kind of a miss click

[@MarioHari]

I'm glad to say that I'm currently doing Master's at the same Uni where she also did her graduate studies in Computational Linguistics! Saarland University (now Saarland Informatics Campus) is indeed one of the *best* places in Europe to do grad studies in Computer Science!!!

[@zero11010]

12:09 I’ve seen this abused by front end engineers a lot. Map, filter, reduce and some others do a lot of work. In the right situation they’re great. Each is a full iterative loop. Each builds a new array. I’ve seen these chained to .map().filter().map.()reduce().map() results. When dealing with large amounts of data this is a whole lot of looping and a whole lot of extra arrays being created (which is essentially an extra action on each element (2N+ instead of 1N), plus the space it takes up). If you know it’s a small amount of data the inefficiency hardly matters. If the data can grow it’s really worthwhile to write something much more custom. These kinds of solutions can be many times faster. It’s like building an array and iterating with includes or find or whatever. If you could have built a set and had constant lookup that would have been the right answer. You don’t get a pat on the back for not looping with map or filter or forEach if the right solution is constant look up from a set.

[@DryBones111]

That's the issue with the built-in array prototypal implementations but typically in a well designed library (or an actual FP language) these operations are composed and recursed through once, applying the functions using thunks.

[@ee-vk7is]

hey my english is not that good but im trying to understand this sentence : "You don’t get a pat on the back for not looping with map or filter or forEach if the right solution is constant look up from a set." "You dont get a praise if you are not using loop , if the solution is to use set ?" Shouldnt he get praise ? Or get a praise if he is not using loop ?

[@zero11010]

@@ee-vk7is it means you don’t get praise for avoiding this kind of loop if the ideal solution was to avoid using an array in the first place.

[@ee-vk7is]

@@zero11010 That means, "just do whatever solves the problem, but maybe try to achieve the ideal solution" ?

[@zero11010]

@@ee-vk7is it means a solution that isn’t optimal isn’t very impressive. Praise comes from a more optimal solution. There are a million ways to write code that will accomplish a given task. A VERY small percentage of those are ideal (worthy of praise or recognition). I’m sure you’ve seen code like what I was originally speaking about. It takes up very few lines on the screen. It takes a thing and runs 4 or 5 separate array methods where many of those methods will separately create a new array and EACH is a separate loop over the data. It’s slow and lazy way to write code. Lots of people do it. Mostly because they don’t know better or aren’t held to higher standards. It’s MUCH more common with front end code because if you’re almost always dealing with small amounts of data then this kind of thing can be acceptable. If you have an array with 10 elements and you iterate over it 5 times and create 4 additional duplicate arrays that are just garbage … well, it doesn’t matter a ton. That’s a small amount of work and it’s all happening on the client side. That’s still hundreds of operations and 4N space you’re taking up. But, if N is small that’s not a big deal. It would still be better, in most situations, to write easy to read code that does the same work in 1N space and 1N time (instead of 4N space and 5N time in this example). Again … if N is equal to 10 … it hardly matters either way. But, if N becomes more considerable and if the code is filled with these inefficient patterns … things will add up quickly.