What is the definition of a higher-order function?

A higher-order function is any function that takes one or more functions as arguments, which it uses to operate on some data, and/or returns a function as a result. Higher-order functions are meant to abstract some operation that is performed repeatedly. The classic example of this is map, which takes an array and a function as arguments. map then uses this function to transform each item in the array, returning a new array with the transformed data. Other popular examples in JavaScript are forEach, filter, and reduce. A higher-order function doesn't just need to be manipulating arrays as there are many use cases for returning a function from another function. Function.prototype.bind is one such example in JavaScript.

Map

Let's say we have an array of names that we need to transform to uppercase.

const names = ['irish', 'daisy', 'anna'];

The imperative way will be as such:

const transformNamesToUppercase = function (names) {
  const results = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < names.length; i++) {
    results.push(names[i].toUpperCase());
  }
  return results;
};
transformNamesToUppercase(names); // ['IRISH', 'DAISY', 'ANNA']

Use .map(transformerFn) makes the code shorter and more declarative.

const transformNamesToUppercase = function (names) {
  return names.map((name) => name.toUpperCase());
};
transformNamesToUppercase(names); // ['IRISH', 'DAISY', 'ANNA']