Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer

Many, many of the legendary programmers know many programming languages. What they know from one language helps them write better code in another one. But it’s not really the language that matters: adding knowledge of C# to your knowledge of Java doesn’t make you much better. The languages are too similar: they encourage you to look at problems in pretty much the same way. You need to know languages that conceptualize problems and solutions in substantially different ways. Once upon a time, object-oriented programming was a radical departure from what most programmers knew. So learning it was both hard and mind-expanding. Nowadays, the OO style (or some approximation to it) is the dominant one, so ambitious people need to seek out different styles. The functional programming style is nicely different from the OO style, but there are many interesting points of comparison between them. This book aims to teach you key elements of the functional style, helping you take them back to your OO language.