The Art of Functional Programming - Anjana Vakil | JSHeroes 2022

Functional Programming (FP), a paradigm in which programs are made up of pure, stateless functions, is adored by many programmers for how easy it makes it to predict, test, and debug the behavior of the code we write. Although FP has an unfortunate reputation as an ivory-tower domain full of obscure jargon comprehensible only to those with PhDs in category theory, the core concepts are straightforward ideas all of us can understand, and even have fun learning!
In this talk, we’ll create generative art as a way to explore fundamental FP concepts such as recursion and function composition, and tackle the practical challenges of FP in the real world, such as dealing with the tricky parts like side effects and randomness which don’t fit into the safe, sterile world of pure functions. By the end of the talk we’ll not only have the key concepts & techniques we need to start writing our own functional programs, we’ll have some nice SVG art to look at too!

[@paladin80lvl]

yet another JavaScript teacher

[@ehza]

This is very intuitive.

[@giovannilampis]

Many thanks Anjana, would you suggest studying functional programming to a beginner javascript student, who is normally taught object oriented programming?

[@parth46767]

Hi there, though I am not very experienced with functional programming I have however dabbled a little in Haskell and Scala. I would reccomend you at least try to learn the basics of Functional Programming "because" it is different from object-oriented programming. It will be non-intuitive at first and it will force you to think in a very different mind frame than what you use for OOP. Thinking of a problem from a functional perspective can often help you write better OOP in turn.

[@giovannilampis]

@@parth46767 Hi Parth, many thanks for your advice, I will do that for sure 👍

[@user-mv4oh8yp1y]

@@giovannilampis Did you :D Just curious about the experience because I'm in your foot now. (trying to learn it from the ground up)

[@paulholsters7932]

FP or OOP that is the question. Anyway to me they seem equivalent. So it's obvious one isn't better than the other. Which is why OOP will never by replaced by FP since it conquered the market first.

[@banatibor83]

In a Dave Farley interview it was said, OOP look like FP if done right.

[@mishafiullah]

good

[@shehab976]

OOP is more versatile cz u have functions that is named of methods,and u may have constructor or just the inheritance and so much more u can imagine,function is just an element of OOP

[@coder_one]

A classic example of a genius who doesn't have a clue about the subject, but speaks up. I suspect you write even worse OOP than you comment on the FP topic....