What does the function f: x ↦ y mean?
It means that $f$ is a function that takes the value $x$ to the value $y$. For instance, $$f: x\mapsto x^2$$ is an alternate way of writing $f(x) = x^2$.
$f:x \mapsto y$ means that $f$ is a function which takes in a value $x$ and gives out $y$.
But,
$f: \mathbb{N} \to \mathbb{N}$ means that $f$ is a function which takes a natural number as domain and results in a natural number as the result.