Introduction to Functional Programming

Learn about functional programming, pure functions, referential transparency, and immutability in parallel programming.

What is functional programming?

Functional programming is a style of programming that places functions at the forefront. This is similar to how object-oriented programming has classes at its core. This means that functions should be first-class citizens in functional programming. We’ve already encountered first-class citizens this lesson. However, to reiterate, it means that functions can be used and passed around as data. We can bind functions to variables, pass them as arguments to other functions, and return them from a function.

Note: The functions receiving or returning other functions are called higher-order functions.

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