If you ever heard the term higher order function while learning JavaScript and was put off because it sounded tough, fear no more. While the “higher order” part may make it seem like it is a complicated subject, it really isn’t. To have a better understanding of what higher order functions are in JavaScript, you will need to have a firm understanding of what Functional Programming is and the concept of First-Class Functions.

Functional Programming is the process of building software by composing pure functions, avoiding shared state, mutable data, and side-effects. In more simple jargon, functional programming is when you can pass functions as parameters to other functions and also return them as values. Functional code tends to be more precise, readily testable and easy to predict.

JavaScript treats functions as Objects. They are a special type of Object known as Function objects. We can add properties to functions like we do with objects. You can pass them around as parameters to other functions as a callback function and also assign them to variables.

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