This book starts with some relatively simple examples that you might find
in other books that use other programming paradigms so that you compare them
and see how functional programming actually differs. You then move on to other
sorts of programming problems that begin to emphasize the benefits of functional
programming in a stronger way. To make absorbing the concepts of functional
programming even easier, this book uses the following conventions:
Text that you’re meant to type just as it appears in the book is bold. The
exception is when you’re working through a step list: Because each step is
bold, the text to type is not bold.
Because functional programming will likely seem strange to many of you, I’ve
made a special effort to define terms, even some of those that you might
already know, because they may have a different meaning in the functional
realm. You see the terms in italics, followed by their definition