Question

Functions can be roughly divided into those that are called for their side effects and those that are called for their return value. (Though it is definitely also possible to have both side effects and return a value.)

The first helper function in the farm example, printZeroPaddedWithLabel , is called for its side effect: it prints a line. The second version, zeroPad , is called for its return value. It is no coincidence that the second is useful in more situations than the first. Functions that create values are easier to combine in new ways than functions that directly perform side effects.

A pure function is a specific kind of value-producing function that not only has no side effects but also doesn’t rely on side effects from other code—for example, it doesn’t read global variables that are occasionally changed by other code. A pure function has the pleasant property that, when called with the same arguments, it always produces the same value (and doesn’t do anything else). This makes it easy to reason about. A call to such a function can be mentally substituted by its result, without changing the meaning of the code. When you are not sure that a pure function is working correctly, you can test it by simply calling it, and know that if it works in that context, it will work in any context. Nonpure functions might return different values based on all kinds of factors and have side effects that might be hard to test and think about.

Still, there’s no need to feel bad when writing functions that are not pure or to wage a holy war to purge them from your code. Side effects are often useful. There’d be no way to write a pure version of console.log , for example, and console.log is certainly useful. Some operations are also easier to express in an efficient way when we use side effects, so computing speed can be a reason to avoid purity.

This is a book about getting computers to do what you want them to do. Computers are about as common as screwdrivers today, but they contain a lot more hidden complexity and thus are harder to operate and understand. To many, they remain alien, slightly threatening things.