Best of Functional Programming — January 2026

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   Article

   stitcher.io·19w

   PHP in 2026

   PHP 8.5 brings the pipe operator, clone with parameters, closures in attributes, and fatal error backtraces. Partial function application is coming in PHP 8.6, enabling cleaner pipe operator usage. Pattern matching is under discussion. FrankenPHP, a Go-based runtime offering 10% performance gains, is gaining traction with PHP Foundation support. Mago, a Rust-based linter/formatter/analyzer, reached stable release. Async PHP development continues through multiple RFC iterations. PHPverse online conference returns in 2026, and the Tempest framework is preparing its third major release with 80+ contributors.

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2. 2
   Article

   stitcher.io·17w

   Partial function application in PHP 8.6

   PHP 8.6 will introduce partial function application (PFA), allowing developers to create function references with some parameters pre-filled using placeholders. The `?` placeholder represents a single argument, while `...` captures zero or more parameters. This feature builds on PHP 8.1's first-class callables and pairs especially well with PHP 8.5's pipe operator, eliminating the need for verbose closure wrappers. PFA supports multiple placeholders, named arguments, object methods, static methods, and magic methods, with clear error messages for invalid usage.

   39
3. 3
   Article

   Scott Logic·18w

   Functional Optics for Modern Java

   Lenses, prisms, and traversals are composable abstractions that solve Java's immutability gap by treating access paths as first-class values. Lenses focus on exactly one value in product types, prisms handle optional variants in sum types, and traversals operate on zero or more values in collections. Using Higher-Kinded-J's annotation-driven generation, these optics compose to create powerful paths for reading and updating deeply nested immutable structures without manual reconstruction. The article demonstrates practical patterns including lens composition, type-safe downcasting with prisms, filtered traversals, and previews effect-polymorphic operations and the Focus DSL.

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