Barry Burd
C◦mp◦se :: Conference
www.composeconference.org/2017/
May 19, 2017
So far, we’ve failed to impress most imperative programmers with the beauty of functional programming. We write articles and do presentations, but developers resist. Can we do a better job of describing and promoting functional thinking?
As a professor of Computer Science, I had a special opportunity to study this question. In the spring of 2017, I taught Haskell to a class of 15 undergraduates at Drew University. Most of the students were comfortable with Python and Java, but they had no experience with functional programming (not even with lambdas in Java 8). During this semester-long course, I explored the hurdles students faced, discovered which topics they learned easily and which topics gave them the most trouble. I found ways to reach past their imperative prejudices and get them to think functionally. Some of my conclusions about teaching Haskell were no-brainers, but some others were surprises.
In this talk, I describe my experiences teaching pure functional programming (and, yes, even monads) to college students. When you hear about my efforts, you’ll find new ways to explain functional programming to your peers.
22 ноя 2017
