front matter
Functional programming (FP) has become an important and exciting part of mainstream programming. The majority of new languages and frameworks created in the 2010s are functional, leading some to predict that the future of programming is functional. Meanwhile, popular object-oriented (OO) languages like C# and Java have seen the introduction of more functional features with every new release, enabling a multiparadigm programming style. And yet, adoption in the C# community has been slow. Why is this so? One reason, I believe, is the lack of good literature:
- Most FP literature is written in and for functional languages, especially Haskell. For developers with a background in OOP, this poses a programming-language barrier to learning FP concepts. Even though many of the concepts apply to a multiparadigm language like C#, learning a new paradigm and a new language at once is a tall order.
- Even more importantly, most of the books in the literature tend to illustrate functional techniques and concepts with examples from the domains of mathematics or computer science. For the majority of programmers who work on Line of Business (LOB) applications day in and day out, this creates a domain gap and leaves them wondering how relevant these techniques may be for real-world applications.