Skip to main content
Software Engineering

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

3
  • Definitely no offence taken! While I will still maintain that I know some things about functional programming, maybe my assertions in the question about how much I know were a little over-stated. I am really a relative beginner. So seeing how this particular attempt of mine can be re-written in such a concise clear but still functional way seems like gold...thank you. I'll be studying your re-write carefully. Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 12:35
  • 1
    I've heard it said that having long chains and/or nesting of methods eliminates unnecessary intermediate variables. In contrast, your answer breaks my chains/nesting into intermediate stand-alone statements using well-named intermediate variables. I find your code more readable in this case, but I'm wonder how general you're trying to be. Are you saying that long method chains and/or deep nesting are often or even always an anti-pattern to be avoided, or are there times when they bring significant benefit? And is the answer to that question different for functional versus imperative coding? Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 17:59
  • 3
    There are certain situations where eliminating intermediate variables can add clarity. For example, in FP you almost never want an index into an array. Also sometimes there isn't a great name for the intermediate result. In my experience, though, most people tend to err too far the other way. Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 19:43