In this chapter, we have explored some functional programming concepts in Scala. We have seen what functional programming is and how Scala supports it, why it matters, and the advantages of using functional concepts. We have seen why learning FP concepts is important in learning the Spark paradigm. Pure functions, anonymous functions, and higher-order functions were discussed with suitable examples. Later in this chapter, we saw how to handle exceptions in the higher-order functions outside collections using the standard library of Scala. Finally, we discussed how functional Scala affects object mutability.

In the next chapter, we will provide an in-depth analysis on the Collections API, one of the most prominent features of the standard library.