A Skeptic's Guide to Functional Style Javascript - Jonathan Mills

With modern JavaScript, we have seen a rise in ‘functional style’ javascript popularity. This style introduces a whole slew of terms and patterns that have different connotations depending on who you are talking to. Phrases like purity, higher order functions, and currying are thrown around all over the place. What does ‘no side effects’ mean, and what about when you need to get something done? And what in the world is a ‘monad’?

In this talk, Jon will walk through the world of the functional programmer and show how these phrases and patterns fit into modern JavaScript development. Jon will work through functions as first class objects in JS, and show how we can use that feature to write clean, maintainable, and reusable code. You will also walk away armed with the information you need to see through all they hype. You’ll have a firm grasp of where these patterns are useful, and as importantly, where they are not.

NDC Conferences

[PlerbyMcFlerb]

I think that this is a good introductory explanation of some of the "why" questions, and I can understand the avoidance of arrow functions to help make the concepts more clear... but the aversion to using terse arrow functions feels a little unwarranted. I don't see any issue with, for instance using the format 'a=>b=>a+b'. It's a really concise way to represent a two-param function in a curried format, and since JS developers are already familiar with closures, it shouldn't be that difficult for JS devs to grock this.

[jeffshepherd]

If functional style is the easiest style, why do all intro to programming classes begin with imperative style?