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Discussion on: Practical Functional Programming in JavaScript - Side Effects and Purity

 
richytong profile image
Richard Tong

I would just like to point out this interesting take from the MDN web docs on functions. (link)

A function is a JavaScript procedure—a set of statements that performs a task or calculates a value.

It sounds like they're saying a function and a procedure are the same. Is there a misunderstanding here?

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mikearnaldi profile image
Michael Arnaldi

There is a misunderstanding, the definition of function is a binary mapping between sets. The interpretation from MDN is strictly related to the world of programming languages where the term function is improperly used to represent any procedure. It is not the meaning used in "functional programming" where functional refers to a classic function. Sometimes in programming we like to add the term "pure" to denote when a function (from the language perspective) is actually a function.

One thing to note is that all of the nice properties of "pure" functions that are leveraged in FP are almost never respected when functions are not "pure" (or better, not functions)