Functional data structures have the power to improve the code base of an application and improve efficiency. With the advent of functional programming, and with powerful functional languages such as Scala, Clojure and Elixir becoming part of important enterprise applications, functional data structures have gained an important place in the developer toolkit. Immutability is a cornerstone of functional programming. Immutable and persistent data structures are thread-safe by definition and hence very appealing for writing robust concurrent programs. How do we express traditional algorithms in a functional setting? Won’t we end up copying too much? Do we trade performance for versioned data structures? This course attempts to answer these questions by looking at functional implementations of traditional algorithms.
It begins with a refresher and consolidates what functional programming is all about. Next, you’ll get to know about Lists, the work horse data type for most functional languages. We show what structural sharing means and how it helps to make immutable data structures efficient and practical. Moving on, you will learn about binary trees, where we will be building complete trees, greedy algorithms, and back tracking.
About the Author
Atul S. Khot grew up in Marathwada, a region of the state of Maharashtra, India. A self-taught programmer, he started writing software in C and C++. A Linux aficionado and a command-line guy at heart, Atul has always been a polyglot programmer. Having extensively programmed in Java and dabbled in multiple languages, these days he is getting increasingly hooked on Scala, Clojure, and Erlang. Atul is a frequent speaker at software conferences, and a past Dr. Dobb's product award judge. In his spare time, he loves to read classic British detective fiction. He is a foodie at heart and a pretty good cook. Atul someday dreams of working as a master chef, serving people with lip-smacking dishes.
He was the author of Scala Functional Programming Patterns published by Packt Publishing in December 2015. The book looks at traditional object-oriented design patterns and shows how we can use Scala's functional features instead.
Raju Kumar Mishra is a consultant and corporate trainer for big data and programming. After completing his B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad, he worked for Tata Steel. His deep passion for mathematics, data science, and programming took him to Indian Institute of Science (IISc). After graduating from IISc in computational science, he worked for Oracle as a performance engineer and software developer. He is an Oraclecertified associate for Java 7. He is a Hortonworks-certified Apache Hadoop Java developer, and holds a Developer Certification for Apache Spark (O'Reilly School of Technology and Databriks), and Revolution R Enterprise-certified Specialist Certifications. Apart from this, he has also cleared Financial Risk Manager (FRM I) exam. His interest in mathematics helped him in clearing the CT3 (Actuarial Science) exam.
