Introduction
In recent times, many programming languages that run on JVM have emerged. Many of these languages support the concept of writing code in a functional style. Programmers have started realizing the benefits of functional programming and are beginning to rediscover the powerful style of this programming paradigm. The emergence of multiple languages on JVM have only helped to reignite the strong interest in this paradigm.
Java at its core is an imperative programming language. However in recent past many new languages like Scala, Clojure, Groovy etc. have become popular which supports functional programming style and yet run on JVM. However none of these languages can be considered as pure functional language since all of them allow Java code to be called from within them and Java on its own is not a functional language. Still they have different degree of support for writing code in functional style and have their own benefits. Functional programming requires different kind of thinking and has its own advantages as compared to imperative programming.
It seems that Java has also realized functional programming advantages and is slowly inching towards it. First sign of this can be seen in the form of Lambda Expressions that will be supported in Java 8. Although it's too early to comment on this as the draft for Java 8 is still under review and is expected to be released next year, but it does show that Java has plans of supporting functional programming style going forward.
In this article we will first discuss what functional programming is and how it is different from imperative programming. Later we will see where does each of the above mentioned Java based programming languages i.e. Scala, Clojure and Groovy fits in the world of functional programming and what each of them has to offer. And at the last we will sneak-peak into Java 8's lambda expressions.
In recent times, many programming languages that run on JVM have emerged. Many of these languages support the concept of writing code in a functional style. Programmers have started realizing the benefits of functional programming and are beginning to rediscover the powerful style of this programming paradigm. The emergence of multiple languages on JVM have only helped to reignite the strong interest in this paradigm.
Java at its core is an imperative programming language. However in recent past many new languages like Scala, Clojure, Groovy etc. have become popular which supports functional programming style and yet run on JVM. However none of these languages can be considered as pure functional language since all of them allow Java code to be called from within them and Java on its own is not a functional language. Still they have different degree of support for writing code in functional style and have their own benefits. Functional programming requires different kind of thinking and has its own advantages as compared to imperative programming.
It seems that Java has also realized functional programming advantages and is slowly inching towards it. First sign of this can be seen in the form of Lambda Expressions that will be supported in Java 8. Although it's too early to comment on this as the draft for Java 8 is still under review and is expected to be released next year, but it does show that Java has plans of supporting functional programming style going forward.
In this article we will first discuss what functional programming is and how it is different from imperative programming. Later we will see where does each of the above mentioned Java based programming languages i.e. Scala, Clojure and Groovy fits in the world of functional programming and what each of them has to offer. And at the last we will sneak-peak into Java 8's lambda expressions.
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