52 books like Domain Modeling Made Functional

My journey in the world of software development has been arduous and challenging.

One of the common struggles we all face is the overwhelming number of solutions available, making it impossible to fully grasp everything at a deep level.

Just when I thought I had mastered an approach and felt competent in it, a new shiny approach would emerge, demanding my immediate attention. It often felt like a never-ending race to keep up with the ever-evolving field.

This constant pursuit of staying relevant as a software engineer can be frustrating, as it feels like we are always lagging behind the rapidly advancing world. I discovered that knowledge of specific technologies, frameworks, or libraries does not easily transfer across different technology stacks. They are too specific and lack universality. It was then that I turned my focus to more general principles of software engineering.

I realized that there are fundamental engineering… show more.

It was a wonderful time when I first embarked on my programming journey.

I felt an immense sense of power over computers and had countless ideas on how programming could improve my life and the lives of others. Everything seemed within reach, and I approached the world of programming with great enthusiasm in the early 2000s.

However, reality hit me like a cold shower when I started delving into actual software development. I quickly realized that it was far more challenging than just writing code.

Each programming language and technology had its hidden complexities and treacherous pitfalls. Every domain was rife with intricate nuances that had to be understood before attempting to develop software within it. I soon discovered that there was no such thing as a "perfect solution" that could be universally applied.

As I ventured into working with real-world domains, I confronted the daunting task of addressing the… show more.

I'm a devoted advocate of functional programming and a passionate Haskell enthusiast.

Ironically, there was a time in my life when I was a student and held the belief that functional programming was merely an impractical academic pursuit.

However, I soon had a revelation that the techniques I employed in C++ to mitigate the inherent unsafety of the language actually aligned with the core principles of functional programming: immutability, purity, and composability.

This realization left a profound impression on me, prompting me to delve into learning Haskell. It proved to be a pivotal moment that significantly shaped my entire career trajectory.

As I delved deeper into functional programming, I discovered a significant void in terms of software engineering practices that were prevalent in the realm of object-oriented programming.

Drawing from my experiences in C++ and C#, I noticed numerous gaps in our understanding of how to build robust applications using… show more.

This book is different from the others I recommended, because its focus is not really on creating algorithms, but rather on how to improve code with a systematic process, keeping functionality but enhancing quality.

The author shows several practical techniques that he applies to real-world problems and empower you to elevate your code's quality and adapt it seamlessly to changing needs. It's not just about writing code; it's about becoming a more effective and confident developer.

I consider this book a companion on the journey to mastering the craft of coding. With it, you’ll always be able to achieve higher-quality code, no matter the original version of the code.

You may have got a taste of functional programming by learning some functional techniques in the language they use everyday, but if you want to deepen your knowledge, it's best to learn a functional language.

A multi-paradigm language like C# allows you to mix and match different techniques; a purely functional language, on the other hand, will force you to use the functional approach throughout—for example, by not allowing any state mutation at all.

The natural choice would be to learn Haskell, the functional language of reference and a lingua franca among functional programmers. Learning Haskell will allow you to take advantage of a wealth of literature on functional programming - books, blogs, talks, and so on - many of which have code samples in Haskell.

For this, I recommend you read Learn You a Haskell for Great Good by Miran Lipovaca. This book has been a favourite throughout the… show more.

For many years I did not question the validity of the language I was using, focussing instead on becoming good at getting it to do what was needed. It never occurred to me that, say, the type system could be flawed, causing extra work and allowing unnecessary bugs to seep in.

But what if, instead of writing validation code, you could define your types in a way that makes it impossible to create an invalid instance? What if you could define state transitions in such a way that a state machine cannot transition into an invalid state? These are indeed some of the things the Idris language allows.

In his book Type-Driven Development with Idris, Edwin Brady takes you through both the ideas of type-driven development, and how they're enabled in Iris. Iris looks a lot like Haskell, but better. It even has a unique solution for the complex issue… show more.

If you're a C# programmer and have read or are interested in my book, there's a good chance you're working on a backend that supports a web application powered with JavaScript (or another language that compiles to JavaScript).

If you're interested in having more functional programming in your life, I recommend you learn Elm, a purely functional language that compiles to JavaScript.

To do this, I recommend Richard Feldman's Elm in Action, a book that takes you from zero to writing a web app in Elm.

The book teaches you everything you need to know to get started with Elm: 1) the syntax—it's a language of the ML family (like Haskell or F#) but its type system is simpler, and generally the language has been designed to be the most approachable functional language out there; 2) the Elm architecture—you write code that works within a framework, so you can write… show more.

I think it's beyond dispute that concurrency is the most challenging area of programming.

Even fairly simple programs can become dauntingly complex once you introduce concurrency into the picture. For this reason, concurrency is definitely one area where even accomplished programmers should keep honing their skills.

Another difficulty is that there are different sorts of concurrency (parallelism, multi-threading, asynchrony), and different environments (in terms of latency, durability, etc) which all require different solutions.

Paul Butcher's Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks helps you to make sense of this complexity by presenting different programming tasks along with the solution that most effectively tackles each task. It takes you from a demonstration of the use (and problems) of threads and locks - the most widespread, yet also the most low-level and error-prone approach to concurrent programming - to atoms - units that associate a constant identity with a mutable value - to… show more.

A gentle yet detailed book for beginner programmers. A great book for those who know they'll be getting up to some programming in R but who are very new to programming in general. The book's chapters are filled with content on the syntax, usage, and 'best practice' guidelines. The examples guide the reader in a step-by-step fashion to maximise understanding. An especially unique chapter providing examples on things you can do in R that you might've otherwise done in Excel is one of its stand-out features.

This book introduces developers to ClojureScript which is a dialect of Clojure that targets JavaScript runtimes.

It's a great choice for web developers who are considering building full-stack Clojure applications. The book will help developers learn about the differences between Clojure and ClojureScript, and to make effective use of both language dialects for building applications that span both the front-end and the backend.