Data in Motion

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====== Functional Programming ======

Why Functional Programming (FP)?

I do not oppose object oriented programming (and think that OO can coexist nicely with FP), rather, I believe that a style of programming that embraces the advantages of both OO and FP can realize significant benefits.  For example:

  * Easier tests with fewer fixtures and mocks, that refactor cleanly with the production code
  * More natural parallelism.  
    * Using a functional architecture, often parallelism can be added automatically as a feature of the library, without requiring synchronization or locking.
    * With multiple cores being standard equipment on today's computers, having natural parallelism that you just switch on is a huge advantage.

Put quite simply, a functional style of programming can be achieved in any programming language, from //Java// to //Scala//--yet it is not the usual style that is practiced.

In this space, I'll document my explorations into functional programming.  Most of the code here will be in either Java or Scala, though currently I'm using Java most of the time.

In addition, the "Monad" design pattern is a significant pattern in functional code.  An ongoing theme is an attempt to demystify what a Monad is, where every experienced programmer has already used monads (often without realizing it), and why this is useful.

===== More on this =====

In this space I index my writings on functional programming, and particularly on Monads.

  * [[blog:improvements_on_null_safety_for_java_and_eclipse|An Option Monad for Java]]
  * [[blog:databinding_chaining_observablevalues_together|Monads and Eclipse Databinding]]
  * [[blog:comprehensibly_comprehending_monads|An Informal Introduction to Monads for Java and Scala Programmers]]
  * [[blog:java_and_scala_monad_tutorials|A list of Scala and Java monad tutorials]]

===== External links =====

  * http://noelmarkham.github.io/scalaz-scala.io -- Excellent Scalaz presentation
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