Use functional programming techniques to write elegant JavaScript
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Shantanu Bhattacharya June 14, 2006
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Shantanu Bhattacharya |
Shantanu Bhattacharya has extensively designed and created architecture
for application software for retail, system integration, and
healthcare; networking software that's SNMP-based, and TCP/IP stack;
security software; a file system for India's first supercomputer; and
Real Time Software for the Indian Missile Program. Currently he is
working in the healthcare industry for Siemens in Bangalore, India as a
chief architect.
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Shantanu Bhattacharya
has written 1 articles for JavaScriptSearch. |
View all articles by Shantanu Bhattacharya... |
Functional, or declarative, programming is a very powerful
programming method and is gaining popularity in the software industry.
This article introduces some of the relevant functional programming
concepts, and provides examples to use those concepts effectively. The
author explains how to write elegant code with JavaScript, which can
import constructs and features from functional programming. Introduction
Functional programming languages have been in academia for quite
some time, but historically they do not have extensive tools and
libraries available. With the advent of Haskell in the .NET platform,
functional programming is becoming more popular. Some traditional
programming languages, such as C++ and JavaScript, import constructs
and features from functional programming. In many cases, repetitive
code in JavaScript leads to clumsy coding. You can avoid all that if
you use functional programming. Also, you can write more elegantl
callbacks with a functional programming style.
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Functional programming
Functional programming describes only the operations to be performed
on the inputs to the programs, without use of temporary variables to
store intermediate results. The emphasis is to capture "what and why"
rather than the "how." It emphasizes the definition of functions rather
than the implementation of state machines, in contrast to procedural
programming, which emphasizes execution of sequential commands.
Large scale knowledge management applications benefit greatly from
using a functional programming style as it simplifies development.
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Because functional programming encompasses a very different way of
composing programs, programmers who are used to the imperative paradigm
can find it difficult to learn. In this article you'll see examples of
how to write good, elegant code in JavaScript in a functional style.
I'll discuss: -
Functional programming concepts, including anonymous functions, different ways to call functions, and how to pass functions as arguments to other functions.
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Use of functional concepts, with examples of: extending array sort; elegant code for dynamic HTML generation; and application of a sequence of functions.
Read on... |