Book review: Functional reactive programming

content/reviews/books/functional-reactive-programming.md

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