Monads in JS: A pragmatic guide
Monands are touted as the best solution for common problems in functional programming, but can be hard to pearn if you want to learn how to use them without having a degree in Category Theory. In this talk, we'll discuss common monads that you can start using today (and are already using), focusing on the practical benefits to us as developers.
Ruby versus the Titans of FP
Clojure, Haskell and Javascript reign as the dominant functional languages of our era. But surely anything they can do, Ruby can do better? And what is it that they actually do? Come learn about three core concepts of functional programming, and see how Ruby stacks up against its peers when it comes to making them powerful.
The time for the talk will be thirty minutes, divided into three 10-minute sections. During each one, we'll study some functional code from a language, spend a few minutes gleaning some knowledge from our example, and then demonstrate how to apply our discovery to the daily workflow of a Rubyist. At the end of the 30 minutes, I'll open up for a few questions before the allotted time is up.
The three concepts that I'll be covering are higher-order functions, composition, and currying. Using Clojure, we'll demonstrate the concept of higher order functions and how they can be used to make the behavior of functions flexible and reusable. After that, we'll switch over to Haskell and demonstrate the value of functional composition, which lets us take our reusable building blocks and create complex functionality. Finally, we'll end with Javascript, and use the power of currying to turn more complex functions into easily composable units, letting us come full circle and use all three of our tools together in Ruby to gain a lot of the convenience of FP.
The target audience are Rubyists comfortable with the language that might be FP-curious, or have dabbled in other functional languages and would like to learn how to use their findings in their Ruby work.
There's a lot of buzz about functional programming in the general programming community, with many programmers and organizations experimenting with different languages and wondering how to take lessons learned in them back to their other projects. I had a lot of experience with FP when I started my first job as a Rubyist, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to use what I did know for a language that seemed almost alien to me. Now six months in, I'm excited for an opportunity to pass along some of that knowledge while giving others a taste of functional programming, no matter what language they use.
As a software engineer for Mavenlink, I'm new to Ruby but not to programming. My first experience with code was on QBasic 15 years ago, and I haven't put down a keyboard since. Now on my first job as a Rubyist, I've been having fun bringing my deep functional knowledge to my organization, and love teaching anyone that wants to learn.