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title = "Functional Reactive Programming - Stephen Blackheath, Anthony Jones"
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date = 2020-03-04
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["books", "reviews", "stephen blackheath", "it", "anthony jones",
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"0 stars"]
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+++
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24671986-functional-reactive-programming)
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Functional Reactive Programming teaches the concepts and applications of FRP.
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It begins with a careful walk-through of the FRP core operations and
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introduces the concepts and techniques you'll need to use FRP in any language.
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Following easy-to-understand examples, you'll learn both how to use FRP in
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greenfield applications and how to refactor existing applications. Along the
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way, the book introduces the basics of functional programming in a
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just-in-time style, so you never learn anything before you need to use it.
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When you're finished, you'll be able to use FRP to spend more time adding
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features and less time fixing problems.
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<!-- more -->
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{{ stars(stars=0) }}
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* (-) Some phrases are a bit hard to read. Maybe it's because I'm
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not a native English speaker[^1], but some are akin to "my beautiful
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nature photos", which you can read in different ways ("my beautiful photos
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of nature", "my photos of beautiful nature") and I had to backtrack and
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read the whole thing again.
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* (-) Code listings are a mess: long and with no separation of concerns. It is
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ok if you use lambdas for simpler functions, but when you keep piling
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lambdas over lambdas, things get a bit out of hand. Trying to explain some
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functionality in a 200 line function is not actually helpful.
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* (-) The ePub version seriously need another check. Some code listings are
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pure text, following the font size the user set in their reader; other are
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screenshots/images of code, which get way out of hand, as some of those
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had a font 1/5 of the size I set up (yes, I use a large font, I'm reading
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at night without my glasses, but the point remains).
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* (--) There is very little explanation on what FRP really is, but a lot about
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how to do things with Sodium, the authors' library. Instead of focusing on
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how to build your own FRP system, using Sodium as reference, the book
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focuses _a lot_ in using Sodium and its relationship with FRP instead
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of explaining the concept behind the FRP functionality itself.
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* (--) The authors show some weird prejudices against TDD. For example, they
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say that FRP doesn't require TDD and that using TDD is actually _harmful_
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for FRP (!!![^2]), "unless you test logic" (???[^3]). I have to ask: Seriously?
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What do you think TDD is about? Lines of code? TDD says that "tests should
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validate behaviors, not implementation" and I'm wondering why the authors
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are so reticent against TDD when their concept of TDD seems completely out
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of place.
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* (---) There is a strong gatekeeping in the book. While talking about other
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frameworks, the authors decided to focus more on "why this framework
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is not pure FRP, while Sodium is" instead of, again, focusing on the
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concepts of FRP itself. "FRP says so and so, you can build this with
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framework X using that and that" is a good way to do it; "FRP says so and
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so, framework X do this which is not what the FRP says, so framework X is
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not FRP, but Sodium is!" is a dickish way to downplay other frameworks.
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Not only that, but every time Sodium break some FRP rule (rules that
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the authors themselves keep listing), they put a long explanation on why
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it's ok for you to break the rule there when using Sodium, but Sodium,
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although requiring you to break some FRP rule, is actually a pure-FRP
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framework, and not those pesky other frameworks that are not pure-FRP
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frameworks.
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Honestly, I read the book and I still don't understand FRP; all I got was some
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concepts for a Sodium framework.
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---
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[^1]: ... which may appear as no surprise, with the amount of grammar mistakes
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in this post. :p
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[^2]: That's surprise.
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[^3]: That's confusion.
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