Transduction — Functional Programming in JavaScript

One of the great benefits of FP (Functional Programming) is how it encourages a declarative style of code rather than imperative. It has these three very common functions that are widely known as map, filter, and reduce.

One of the great benefits of FP (Functional Programming) is how it encourages a declarative style of code rather than imperative. It has these three very common functions that are widely known as map, filter, and reduce.

This article will discuss one advance — or I should say “very clever” technique and pattern — used in Functional Programming called Transduction.

Before reading this article, it’s crucial that you are familiar with FP general principles as jumping straight onto this without prior FP knowledge might feel a little pointless. Here’s an article that I wrote earlier which provides an introduction to these principles.

Preface

Before starting with transduction, it’s very important to understand how filter, map, and reduce work. Below is a simple real-world diagram that lays out how these three functions break down.

Let’s say that we have to make a breakfast fruit smoothie bowl. The steps involved are:

1. From the pool of veggies and fruits in the refrigerator or the basket, we filter out only the mandarin orange, banana, and avocado and put them in a bowl while not touching broccoli and carrot at all.
2. Next, we need to peel the fruits in order to put them in a blender. In doing so, we alter these fruits into a simpler form and keep them in another bowl.
3. As the last step, we need to blend all the fruits and reduce them into one single form which we serve in a final new bowl to enjoy.

To connect this process with the aforementioned functions, the first step is a “filter” operation, the second step is “map”, and the third step is “reduce”. The process of making a smoothie bowl consists of three separate steps. The output from the previous step serves as an input to the next one, just like an ethanol or beer production pipeline.

functor javascript transducers performance functional-programming

<p>Other then the syntactical differences. The main difference is the way the this keyword behaves? In an arrow function, the this keyword remains the same throughout the life-cycle of the function and is always bound to the value of this in the...

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