about this book
Who should read this book
Grokking Simplicity was designed for programmers with 2–5 years of experience. I expect you to know at least one programming language. It will help if you have built a system sizeable enough to feel the pain we’ve all felt when systems scale. The code examples are written in a style of JavaScript that emphasizes readability. If you can read C, C#, C++, or Java, you should have little trouble
How this book is organized: a roadmap
This book is organized into two parts and nineteen chapters. Each part introduces a fundamental skill and then explores the other skills that fundamental skill opens up. Each part ends with a capstone about design and architecture in a functional programming context. Part 1, which starts in chapter 3, introduces the distinction between actions, calculations, and data. Part 2, which starts in chapter 10, introduces the idea of first-class values. There is a high-level tour of the possibilities that these skills open up in chapter 2.
- Chapter 1 introduces the book and the main idea of functional programming.
- Chapter 2 gives a high-level tour of what is possible using the skills in this book.
Part 1: Actions, calculations, and data