Seriously though, functional programming concepts even when applied to non-functional programming languages have a number of advantages including easier testing, more stable code (fewer bugs), and easier human comprehension.
This website is a project site for UIUC’s CS 421 course in Programming Languages and Compilers. It is somewhat inspired by the Learn You a Haskell website which was a fundamental resource for the course. This site takes a theoretical, practical, and hopefully comedic approach to applying functional programming concepts to common Javascript and NodeJS patterns and problems.
In this chapter we introduce functional programming and give some theory and background as to why it’s a “thing.” What’s all the buzz about? How different is it from “regular” programming. Why should I even bother? Can I write functionally in nonfunctional languages?
One of the central tenants of functional programming is the lack of side effects and immutability of variables. This chapter covers these concepts with examples from NodeJS scripts.
Nobody wants to be second class and that includes functions! In this chapter we will dive into the different kinds of functions used in Javascript and see how they borrow from functional languages like Haskell.
Oh great, another CS concept that doesn’t have a practical use in my coding job. Hold on there cowboy! In this chapter, we’ll explain currying and deconstruct a basic curry transformation along with explaining the awesomeness of composition.
In this chapter, we’ll cover some advanced concepts that may-or-may-not be used (or even well understood) by your average web software engineer. These topics include recursion, practical functional NodeJS, and front end framework considerations.
My name is Brandon Ching and I am the creator of this project website. What should be painfully obvious to my CS professors and graders that the PhD after my name is quite obviously NOT in a technical field. Despite this, I have worked in the web software and cloud engineering space for over 15 years now. I was a token software engineer for around 10 years and have spent the past five or so in some form of management/leadership position.