Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Functionally deficient

I have recently returned to looking at and learning functional programming languages. Right now I am looking most closely at Haskell and Objective CAML (ocaml for short). There are many others out there ( Eiffel, Erlang, Lisp/Scheme, etc. ) but those are the two I am concentrating on now.

Haskell is interesting because it is purely functional and adheres very closely to mathematical principles (Lambda Calculus, category theory, type theory, etc).

On the other hand Ocaml is a more commonly used nearly-functional language that is known for its performance.

You may be thinking, "My programming language 'X' has functions, what is this 'Functional Programming' thing?" Chances are, your language 'X' falls into the category of imperative/procedural languages.

To help explain the difference and get you started off, here are some great resources to whet your appetite:
In particular, Functional Programming For The Rest Of Us is a great starter article I recommend for people who are new to functional programming.

1 comment:

Michael said...

Kenneth's a nerd!!! :)