Data Oriented Programming

Last update: 14 Oct 2022

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Data Oriented Programming (Reduce software complexity)

Author: Yehonathan Sharvit

ISBN: 9781617298578

Publisher: Manning

Year: 2022

The data-oriented programming (DOP) is a programming paradigm like the more famous object-oriented programming (OOP) and functional programming (FP) paradigms.

DOP adopts some concepts from FP (immutability, pure functions) but its main focus is to reduce the complexity of the applications by streamlining the flow of the data inside the application and exchanged by the application with external resources.

For a better introduction to DOP concepts, you can read this article from the book's author.

The Clojure language popularised the DOP paradigm but it can be also applied to other languages. The code examples in the book are in JavaScript with the Lodash library. OOP code examples are in Java.

Sharvit's book does a good job explaining the DOP approach to the most common development problems, comparing it with the OOP one. The four DOP principles are gradually introduced with a lot of code and simple but effective writing. Dialogues between fictitious characters easy the description of the least simple DOP concepts.

The appendixes are very important: Appendix A summarises the DOP concepts while appendix B shows how to implement the DOP paradigm using static-type languages like Java. The remaining two appendixes are on DOP history and the Lodash library.

Highly recommended.