Questions tagged [functional-programming]
Functional programming is a paradigm which attempts to solve computational problems by the chained evaluation of functions whose output is determined by their inputs rather than the programme state. In this style of programming, side effects and mutable data are deprecated and usually strictly isolated.
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Are there any drawbacks to partial application?
Consider the following Typescript code:
function exampleAction(target: Target, options: ExampleActionOptions) {
// ...
}
export function getExampleAction(options: ExampleActionOptions) {
return (...
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How to Represent Functional Boolean
.NET Boolean type usually makes if else pair all over the code.
Functional Boolean should be more like Either type. Ideally represented as Either<Unit, Unit>.
However, my issues with Either type ...
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Loosened or sequential referential transparency [closed]
I am interested in robotics programming. HW control often involves calculating the derivative or integration of the signal. It seems quite inevitable to avoid local states for such calculation. (Since ...
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Can functional programming languages have deadlock conditions?
I am reading through "Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design" and it says that:
All race conditions, deadlock conditions, and concurrent update problems are ...
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Which paradigm(between OOP and Functional) should be chosen for a given task?
Which paradigm(between OOP and Functional) should be chosen for a given task ? What are the tradeoffs between these two styles ? In which case using Functional makes sense and vice versa,in which case ...
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Is there a non-deterministic function without side effects?
By definition, a pure function is deterministic + no side effect.
Is there any example for a function which has no side effects, but is non-deterministic? I.e., a function without side effects, but ...
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C# coding style, functional approach
I have thought of this for a while and I want to know what you think about this.
This is more of a way to structure the code that might not be 100% object oriented and that is not the purpose. I would ...
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Is it normal for names in functional programming to be extremely terse?
I am working on a compilers assignment in OCaml, and the following is an example of the pre-written code in said assignment:
(* Build a CFG and collection of global variable definitions from a stream *...
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How do compilers work in a language that doesn't allow recursion?
I'm recently learning the programming language, and I wonder how compilers work when the language itself does not allow recursion, like how the compiler or the runtime checkers makes sure that there ...
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Modularity vs pure functions
I often come across this dilemma in my own code and wondered if there is a term for this and if there is a single solution to it. Let me illustrate it with a pseudocode example of making a table from ...
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Block structured iteration and recursion
Programming languages traditionally have blocks that specifically cater to controlling iteration.
There is the simple while-loop:
while (i < 3) {...};
Then there is the more complicated for-loop:
...
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In what language does a method not return a value and a function does?
I don't know from where I got this but in my head a function returns a value and a method does not.
I know that with OOP a method is a function related to a class. But I am trying to remember where I ...
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Dependency injection vs function parameter
I am working on a project that is structured in hexagonal architecture. It is a multi module gradle project where web layer is a separate module that depends on the domain module.
Sample code related ...
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How to organize a chain of functions that share parameters, functional programming
When trying to follow a functional programming paradigm, I often find myself in a situation where I have a chain of functions that I would want to combine/compose somehow, but they all also take in a ...
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Should I use unnecessary function for readability sake
I am implementing if/else statement, by using function "inCase" to make it more readable:
const size = 'small'
const equals = str1 => str2 => str2 === str1
const inCase = (obj) => ...
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How to model transactions in a client-side functional DDD?
I'm new to DDD and I would like to clarify some concepts. I'm thinking about DDD in the client-side.
The first one is regarding transactions:
My understanding is that transactions are a responsibility ...
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Private types, units of measure when is it a good idea?
My question is regarding using private type in F#.
Consider the case we have some application and we have some library. One may consider using units within the library, and making them private behind ...
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Should I add functionality by adding a new method to a class - or should I "register" the new functionality into a data structure?
I have one large class that computes ~50 different metrics (each metric has no side effects).
My code is similar to this:
class ReportingMetrics:
def __init__(self, data:pd.DataFrame, config:dict)...
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Terse finite state machines in Haskell
I'm writing a parser for a markup language in haskell, and a finite state machine fell out of my ideal API. I have code that looks a bit like this:
Token = BoldWord String | Word String | ...
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How to test a function with several conditional nested side effects
In Python, consider a function like the following:
def main(*args):
value1 = pure_function1(*args)
if condition(value1):
value = side_effect1(value1)
if value:
...
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Should I use classes instead of functions with a state needed for computation?
I have implemented the cows and bulls game in C++.
The code:
#include <cstdio>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <ctime>
struct DigitMatches {
int matches_in_right_positions;
int ...
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How to convert vehicle schedule time window calculation algorithm to FP
I am working on an algorithm that optimizes utilitization of a vehicle. What I have is a list of paths the vehicle is planned to take and between which times (time windows) it has to be at a certain ...
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Is ad-hoc polymorphism a good practice in functional programming?
I am developing a utils data engineering package in python, and for the sake of reusability and readability, I chose the functional programming (FP) approach.
Assume a key task of converting data from ...
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Connecting classes by passing method references
I am trying to find a good way of allowing two objects that are separated by a intermediate object to communicate while keeping the architecture loosely coupled. A solution I have developed is to pass ...
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How to improve maintainability and testability of a service by refactoring it into a functional style
A customer of ours has a rather large (500+ LOC) service as central part of the project. Written in C# and consisting of rather clunky large imperative style functions, I was asked to improve the test ...
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How to model a time-distributed process in functional programming style?
I'm searching for any formal/generic approach to modeling a process distributed in time with functional programming. Here is an example.
Let's implement a very simple notification service. It accepts ...
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Should "functional core, imperative shell" approach canonically break "don't test private methods" rule?
In short, "functional core, imperative shell" can be summarized as:
functional core implements logic; you unit test it. Your tests call real functions just like in production real functions ...
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Design suggestions for my simple data-analysis program
I need to create a program with the purpose of cross-referencing personal info from a spreadsheet(s), to check for conflicts of interest between clients of 3 different law firms. All of this client ...
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Appropriate base type for simply typed lambda calculus
Given the following hypothetical programming language:
Intended for practical programming
A simply typed lambda calculus (STLC)
All objects are functions, based on Church encodings
I am aware that ...
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Database access with functional programming
I'm interested in becoming more familiar with functional programming as a paradigm, so I'm trying to introduce a more functional style to some of my projects. I'm struggling to understand how to ...
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Definition of "functor"; Haskell vs. C++
I'm trying to understand whether the Haskell and C++ communities mean different things by the word "functor", or if there's some underlying concept that unifies the two meanings.
My ...
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How functional programming achieves "No runtime exceptions"
How does a functional programming language, such as Elm, achieve "No runtime exceptions"?
Coming from an OOP background, runtime exceptions have been part of whatever framework that is based ...
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What is the name of "an IF-ELSE expression that returns a value"? [closed]
Some programming languages allow conditional value assignments that look like
x = (IF condition THEN a ELSE b)
My search-fu is failing me: how do we call such statements in the jargon of ...
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Choosing the design of a scientific DSL: purely or impurely functional?
My aim is to create a language specific to the scientific field (which would be used mainly in the field of machine learning and physics) which would be based on the functional paradigm, a paradigm ...
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Doesn't "Always test through the public interface" contradict testing of individual composed functions?
I'm currently reading "Composing Software" by Eric Elliott, which is about functional programming in JavaScript. He states that if you compose multiple functions together, and that these ...
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Unclear as to the informal definition of foldr
I've encountered the infomral definition of foldr in a couple of books.
I've attached an image from Bird and Wadler's "Introduction to Functional Programming" (1988), but I've seen the same ...
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How could a computer program do anything if everything is immutable?
I feel this is a bad question because I probably do not understand what I am talking about. In my effort to learn about functional programming, I became stumped on understanding the idea of immutable ...
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Is this extensive usage of closure a known (anti-)pattern? And does it have a name?
I often use function closures for storing data (e.g. database URL), which doesn't change between function calls. Is this an (anti-)pattern? Does it have a name?
While developing apps, which recieve ...
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Functional architecture with lots of I/O
I'm learning about "Functional Core, Imperative Shell" as espoused by Gary Bernhardt in his talk about "Boundaries". In reality, it seems like these ideas have been known for a ...
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Are immutable objects important only in multi-threaded applications and if so, how are shared immutable objects useful?
I think the answer to the first part of my question is, "yes" -- no point in making objects immutable in a single-threaded application (or I guess in a multi-threaded application if that ...
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Refactoring: Pythonic way of reducing the subclasses?
background: so, I am working on an NLP problem. where I need to extract different types of features based on different types of context from text documents. and I currently have a setup where there is ...
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Trying to understand how this class representation truly represents Natural numbers in Scala
Following Martin Odersky's course on coursera - Functional Programming with Scala and I'm on Week 4 where we're learning about Types and Pattern Matching. In the video lecture, this is the ...
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Applying Replace Conditional with Composition in functional programming
If I am writing in a functional style and want to use the Replace Conditional with Composition refactoring pattern on a switch or a long chain of if/else if/else if/..., how do I approach it?
I ...
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Is a safe function returning Maybe partial or total?
The Elm Guide says to use Maybe for partial functions, but I was under the impression that returning Maybe solves the problem of partial functions and makes them total. It gives a value from the ...
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Is it a good practice for functors to store outputs as instance attributes?
The question pretty much says all, but let's look into a simple example (I'm using C++, but the question is not strictly related to any particular language):
So, let's say that we have a functor that ...
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How to name a function that returns a function?
Let's say, for example, that I have a function makeFoo that makes another function foo:
function makeFoo(string) {
return () => string
}
const foo = makeFoo('bar');
I know that makeFoo is a ...
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Can writing Object-Orientated Code in a Functional style improve performance?
Given a scenario where you have consecutive setters or a series of events where an object is modified, can it be more performant to instead write code in a way where a new state is returned rather ...
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Choosing 2 or 3 values out 3 values after calculating their closeness
I want to find a specific algorithm to choose either 2 or 3 out of 3 given values.
Like if I have a set of values 10,11,12 all three are close enough so I will calculate the mean of the value and ...
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What's the value of IO Monad?
When I'm writing code in the form of IO Monad, I wonder what's real value of it.For example I have a function as def something(in: In): IO[Out]; my function is a pure function that **returns an impure ...
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What does it mean for an OS to compile down to a function?
I was reading the Urbit docs and stopped at this paragraph (emphasis mine):
The main thing to understand about our ‘overlay OS’, as we call it, is that the foundation is a single, simple function. ...
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