LiveLessons: Parallel Functional Programming with Java

Douglas C. Schmidt (d.schmidt@vanderbilt.edu)
Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor
of Engineering (Computer Science),
Associate Provost of Research, and
Data Science Institute Co-Director
at Vanderbilt University

Course Summary
Course Topics
Course Objectives
Recommended Background
Java Source Code
Facebook Group
Additional Resources
About the Instructor

Course Summary

My Parallel Functional Programming in Java LiveLessons video series describes by example how to apply Java functional programming features and frameworks to alleviate the complexity of developing software that can run efficiently and scalably on multi-core and distributed-core processors.

In this course, you'll learn how to develop programs using powerful object-oriented and functional programming language features and frameworks supported by Java. This course first provides an introduction to Javas foundational functional programming features, including lambda expressions, method references, and functional interfaces. These core features provide the foundation for the next topic in this course: the Javas Streams framework, which supports functional-style sequential and parallel operations on streams of elements, such as map-reduce transformations on Java collections.

This course also shows by example how to develop efficient reactive programs that run scalably on multi-core processors using powerful object-oriented and functional programming language features and parallelism frameworks supported by Java. This portion of the course describes how Java leverages its functional programming features to create the completable futures framework. This framework defines a powerful reactive programming model that allows programmers to run multiple asynchronous operations concurrently in one or more pools of threads and process their results asynchronously with respect to other operations in a program.

To help you program high-quality quality and scalable parallel functional programs in Java, this course provides over 16 hours of videos that focus on the pattern-oriented techniques, tools, and methods covered in the following parts:

Part 1: Introduction to Java Concurrency and Parallelism
Part 2: Java Sequential Functional Programming Foundations
Part 3: Java Parallel Functional Programming Frameworks

Course Topics

The Table of Contents for this course is available at the bottom of the page here. The following is a summary of the key topics covered in this course:

Part 1: Introduction to Java Concurrency and Parallelism
This part of the course gives an introduction to Java concurrency and parallelism concepts and mechanisms.
Part 2: Java Sequential Functional Programming Foundations
This part of the course covers Java functional programming features (such as lambda expressions, method references, and functional interfaces) and the Java sequential streams framework features (such as intermediate and terminal operations). The source code of Java sequential streams internals, examples, and case studies are analyzed in detail.
Part 3: Java Parallel Functional Programming Frameworks
This part of the course covers Java parallel functional programming features (such as the Java parallel streams and fork-join frameworks) and Java's support for asynchronous programming (such as the Java completable futures framework). Again, the source code of Java sequential streams internals, examples, and case studies are analyzed in detail.

Course Objectives

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

Develop efficient parallel and reactive programs using powerful modern Java object-oriented and functional programming language features and frameworks
Recognize the inherent and accidental complexities involved with developing parallel and reactive software for modern Java clients and servers
Understand how common software patterns and modern Java parallel and reactive programming mechanisms can and cannot help to alleviate this complexity
Know where to find additional sources of information on how to successfully develop robust parallel and reactive programs in modern Java

Recommended Background

This course is intended for software developers who are familiar with

General object-oriented and functional design/programming concepts, such as encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism, extensibility, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
Core object-oriented programming language features, such as classes, inheritance, dynamic binding, and generics that are available in Java

More coverage of these background topics is available in my numerous digital learning offerings.

Java Source Code

The Java source code for all the examples is available here. These examples been tested in Eclipse, Intellij, and/or Android Studio and should be straightforward to port it to other Java environments, as well. Suggestions for improvement are welcome (especially if they are accompanied with updates to the source code).

Facebook Group

There's a Facebook group on Concurrent and Parallel Programming in Java. Feel free to post questions and comments on that group.

Additional Resources

The following are other online sources of material on concurrent and parallel programming in Java:

My videos on object-oriented design and programming with C++ and Java, patterns and frameworks for concurrent, parallel, and networked software, and Android middleware and systems programming mechanisms.
The online supplement to Doug Lea's book Concurrent Programming in Java.: Design Principles and Pattern, 2nd Edition

About the Instructor

Back to Douglas C. Schmidt's LiveLessons page.