Functional Programming in Java: How to Improve Your Java Programs Using Functional Techniques

Summary

Functional Programming in Java teaches Java developers how to incorporate the most powerful benefits of functional programming into new and existing Java code. You'll learn to think functionally about coding tasks in Java and use FP to make your applications easier to understand, optimize, maintain, and scale.

About the Technology

Here's a bold statement: learn functional programming and you'll be a better Java developer. Fortunately, you don't have to master every aspect of FP to get a big payoff. If you take in a few core principles, you'll see an immediate boost in the scalability, readability, and maintainability of your code. And did we mention that you'll have fewer bugs? Let's get started!

About the Book

Functional Programming in Java teaches you how to incorporate the powerful benefits of functional programming into new and existing Java code. This book uses easy-to-grasp examples, exercises, and illustrations to teach core FP principles such as referential transparency, immutability, persistence, and laziness. Along the way, you'll discover which of the new functionally inspired features of Java 8 will help you most.

What's Inside

• Writing code that's easier to read and reason about
• Safer concurrent and parallel programming
• Handling errors without exceptions
• Java 8 features like lambdas, method references, and functional interfaces

About the Reader

Written for Java developers with no previous FP experience.

About the Author

Pierre-Yves Saumont is a seasoned Java developer with three decades of experience designing and building enterprise software. He is an R&D engineer at Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.

Table of Contents

1. What is functional programming?
2. Using functions in Java
3. Making Java more functional
4. Recursion, corecursion, and memoization
5. Data handling with lists
6. Dealing with optional data
7. Handling errors and exceptions
8. Advanced list handling
9. Working with laziness
10. More data handling with trees
11. Solving real problems with advanced trees
12. Handling state mutation in a functional way
13. Functional input/output
14. Sharing mutable state with actors
15. Solving common problems functionally

Pierre-Yves Saumont is an R&D software engineer at Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks. He wrote Le guide du developpeur Java (1999), the first French book published on Java programming.