Introduction

The functional programming paradigm is often avoided by developers around the world, who prefer to continue developing applications using an object-oriented programming paradigm, which is better known and more widely used. This rejection of functional programming happens either due to a simple lack of knowledge or because developers tend to think that it is something hard and only useful in academic fields.  This is probably because there are a lot of new concepts that are usually explained in a principled way, but full of mathematical jargon. Nothing could be further from the truth: functional programming helps us to solve many of the problems that arise when developing software, especially programs that require high levels of asynchronicity and concurrency, and if it is properly explained it does not have to be something difficult to learn.

Scala language combines the best of both the functional and object-oriented programming worlds, and provides complete interoperability with the vast Java ecosystem. In addition, within the Scala ecosystem, there are libraries such as ZIO, which allow developers to be highly productive and create modern, highly performant and concurrent applications, leveraging the power of functional programming – all without any huge barriers to entry.

In this article I will explain the principles of functional programming, and then demonstrate how, with the help of Scala and ZIO, we can create applications to solve real-world problems. As an illustrative example, we will implement a hangman game.

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