Introduction to Functional Programming in Python 🐍📚

Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as an evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. In Python, although it is a multi-paradigm language, we can apply functional programming concepts.

In this tutorial, we'll explore the basic principles of functional programming and how you can apply them in Python.

Pure Functions

In functional programming, we use pure functions. A pure function is a function that, for the same arguments, will always return the same result and has no observable side effects.

def sum(a, b):    return a + bprint(sum(1, 2)) # 3

Immutability

Immutability is a central concept in functional programming. In Python, we have immutable data types like tuples and strings.

tuple = (1, 2, 3)print(tuple) # (1, 2, 3)

Higher Order Functions

Higher-order functions are functions that can accept other functions as arguments and/or return functions as results. In Python, functions such as map(), filter() and reduce() are examples of high-order functions.

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]double = list(map(lambda x: x * 2, numbers))print(double) # [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

Recursion

Recursion is a concept where a function calls itself as its subroutine to solve a problem. This can be used instead of traditional loops.

def factorial(n):    if n == 0:        return 1    else:        return n * factorial(n-1)print(factorial(5)) # 120

Conclusion

Functional programming can help make code cleaner, easier to understand and easier to test. This tutorial covered the basics, but there is much more to learn about functional programming. I hope this guide helps you understand a little more about functional programming in Python!

Now that you've learned about functional programming, let's check out the article about Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming in Python!

Let's go up 🦅