What task is best done in a functional programming style?

Question

I\'ve just recently discovered the functional programming style and I\'m convinced that it will reduce development efforts, make code easier to read, make software more main

Answer 1

I came up with a little trick recently to make lambdas, passed into my extension methods look more F# ish. Here it goes:

What I wanted to do was something like:

3.Times(() => Console.WriteLine("Doin' it"));

Now the extension method for that is easily implemented:

    public static void Times(this int times, Action action)
    {
        Enumerable.Range(1, times).ToList().ForEach(index => action());
    }

What I didn't like is that I am specifying the index here: ForEach(index => action()) although it never is used, so I replaced it with a _ and got ForEach(_ => action())

That's nice, but now I was motivated to have my calling code look similar

(I never liked the "()" at the beginning of the lambda expression), so instead of: 3.Times(() => ...); I wanted 3.Times(_ => ...); The only way to implement this was to pass a fake parameter to the extension method, which never gets used and so I modified it like so:

    public static void Times(this int times, Action action)
    {
        Enumerable.Range(1, times).ToList().ForEach(_ => action(byte.MinValue));
    }

This allows me to call it like this:

3.Times(_ => Console.WriteLine("Doin' it"));

Not much of a change, but I still enjoyed, that it was possible to make that little tweak so easily and at the same time removing the "()" noise makes it much more readable.