Get Started With Functional Programming
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Get Started With Functional Programming

About the Book

The purpose of this book is to explain the main concepts in functional programming as simply as possible in a language agnostic manner. That is not to say that we will not use actual code - rather that the focus is not on implementation details of a specific language, compiler or platform, but on the concepts themselves.

The examples are provided as:

  • drawings and diagrams
  • pseudocode
  • JavaScript - most of the time as simple as pseudocode, but you can actually run it!
  • various other languages illustrating a specific point, e.g. HTML, CSS, SQL, Clojure and others.

Who is this book for?

Anyone who wishes to learn more about functional programming! Some working knowledge about programming basics may be helpful, but ultimately it's not a show stopper - just another thing to learn. 

If you just started learning functional programming, my own personal recommendation is that you go through this book first, then master at least one concrete language and then go through it again as a refresher.

Who is this book NOT for?

Anyone who wishes to learn a specific technology. You will not learn Clojure or JavaScript or any other programming language. You will not learn a MapReduce framework or a BigData pipeline platform. You will learn the basic building blocks behind all those technologies, but that's just about it.

Anyone who wishes to use it as a reference index, academic source or anything similar. Whenever I had to choose between clarity and simplicity of explanations on one side and formal correctness on the other, I chose the simplicity. So, while you can quote the examples to your friends and colleagues and get some geek cred for it, you're not getting a Nobel for it (and neither am I!)

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  • Categories

    • Functional Programming
    • JavaScript
    • Software
    • Computer Science
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About the Author

Goran Jovic
Goran Jovic

Goran is a passionate software engineer and educator with a deep expertise in functional programming. With a profound understanding of programming principles, he excels in distilling complex concepts into accessible and engaging learning materials.


As an advocate for clean, modular, and maintainable code, Goran has dedicated significant time to exploring the nuances of functional programming paradigms. Through his work, he has helped countless developers navigate the intricacies of functional programming, empowering them to create more elegant and efficient software solutions.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
    • About the book
    • Who is this book for?
    • Who is this book NOT for?
  • Programming paradigms
    • Imperative programming
    • Declarative programming
    • Functional programming
  • Theory
    • Pure functions
    • Well-behaved imperative procedures
    • Inherent impurities
    • Intentional impurities
  • Practice
    • Recursion
    • Immutable data structures
    • Higher order functions
    • Lazy Evaluation
    • Memoization
    • Arity, partial application and currying
    • Sequence transformations: map, reduce and others
  • What about side effects?
    • Separation of concerns
    • Encapsulation
    • Idempotence
    • Semantically insignificant side effects
  • Wrapping it up
    • Key Concepts
    • Epilogue

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