Haskell School of Expression

I am long time imperative programmers (C/C++/Java) that feel I have reached a point where I need a paradigm shift. I am looking more and more into functional programming and it seems to be what I need. Unfortunetly it is painful to pick up the concept of functional programing. There are bits and pieces of nuggets that I have been comming accross that may make the journey easier for new commers. In this blog I intend to share my experience.

A recurring issue in reading the Functional Programming papers is that the concepts are explained in terms of simple mathematical program. For instance, you see volumes written on factorial, Fibonacci numbers, or simple programs. They are all well and good, but - at least for me - it is hard to map from factorial to a business problem I am trying to solve. There are, however, nuggets that have been quite useful for me and I will do my best to share them. Please let me know with your comments what does and doesn't work for you too.


The first must read in the topic of functional programming is the Pual Hudak's book: The Haskell School of Expression
You can read the book on line but I HIGHLY recommend that you get your own copy of the book. It is simply the best starting point on the topic.

From my perspective the best thing about the book is that it shows the functional programming implementation in terms of programs that a OO/Imperative programmers are already familiar with. Almost every Object Oriented book describes the OO concept in a paint-like program. Most people learn OO with geometrical shape objects and their draw methods. Hudak's book implemented the same application in Haskell using Functional Programming concepts. It is quite interesting to see how the FP uses the class and instance concept. The book goes on to implement a Pong application in just 17 lines (see Demo4 ). The book is amazing, even if you are not interested in doing Functional Programming, I bet it would have a major impact in your designs.