Functional Programming

Array handling in JS with functional purity

A convention has sprung up recently to make pure functions in Javascript. To get purity when dealing with arrays or objects cloning has been encouraged. But the nuance of Javascript and references is tricky. To get it right we need to understand references, mutations, shallow clones and deep clones. Which is quite a mouthful and is easy to trip over when coding.

TLDR

Know when we’re mutating to use shallow clones and avoid deep clones for internal functions.

Toxic bias in the Javascript community

Having been in the Javascript community for a while I’ve witnessed the building momentum towards a Functional Programming (FP) style. I think Javascript and FP are great but there is perhaps a miss-guided favor or emphasis put on FP as something superior. The React community help perpetuate this with the introduction of hooks, moving away from class based components (favoring functions) and libraries like Redux all employing bits of FP.