F# 101. Riginally a research language from Microsoft Research, F# has long been a "secret weapon" in the arsenal of .NET programmers for doing statistically and mathematically heavy coding. More recently, however, a growing number of developers have begun to see the inherent advantages implicit in writing functional code, particularly in the areas of concurrency. The buzz has begun to approach interesting levels following on the heels of an announcement last year from the head of the Microsoft Developer Division, S. "Soma" Somasegar, that F# would be "productized" and fully supported by Microsoft as a whole, suddenly removing the stigma and licensing restrictions that surround research projects. Concepts F# is a CLR-adapted version of the Object-CAML language, also known as OCaml. Before going too deeply into a more conceptual discussion, a quick glance at some F# code may help put a framework around some of these ideas.
Setup To get started, you must install the F# binaries. Congratulations! Functional Programming in C# 3. As a developer who was raised on procedural and object oriented programming languages like C, C++ and Java it took me a while to figure out what people were raving about when it comes to the benefits of functional programming techniques. I always thought closures and higher order functions were words used by snobby kids from MIT and grad students to show how overeducated they were as opposed to programming tools I'd ever find useful. This thinking was additionally fueled by articles like Joel Spolsky's Can Your Programming Language Do This? Which not only came off as snobby but also cemented the impression that higher order functions like map() and reduce() are for people solving "big" problems like the folks at Google who are trying to categorize the entire World Wide Web not people like me who write desktop feed readers in their free time.
All of this changed when I started learning Python. There are more examples from the RSS Bandit code base but I'm sure you get the idea. Eric White's Blog : Query Composition using Functional Prog. Functional Programming (FP) has the potential to reduce program line count by 20% to 50%, reduce bugs and increase robustness, and move us in the direction of taking advantage of multiple core CPUs. But perhaps due to the learning curve, and unfamiliarity, many developers are not taking advantage of the potential that LINQ and FP offers. This blog is inactive.New blog: EricWhite.com/blogBlog TOCThis is a tutorial on using Functional Programming (FP) techniques for constructing LINQ queries.
It is certainly possible to write simple LINQ queries without using these techniques, but as soon as you start writing more complicated queries, you need to understand these techniques. Learning about functional programming made me a better and faster coder. The tutorial is written in a granular fashion so that if you already understand a topic, you can skip it. 1. Presents the case for why you want to learn functional programming. 2. Functional programming is most applicable when transforming data. 3. Richmond Code Camp 2008.2 - Functional C# Recap - Matthew Podwys. Ects of Functional Programming in C# Presentation and Code - Mat. Functional Programming For The Rest of Us. Did it with .NET - A Higher Calling. After a long break, it's time to return to my informal series of articles on functional programming concepts using only C# 2.0.
While C# 3.0 might be syntactically more suitable to functional-style programming, 2.0 has the advantage of being more familiar, and in some cases, clearer. In addition, using C# 2.0 makes compiling sample code under Visual Studio 2005 possible, so an installation of the Orcas beta (i.e. Visual Studio 2008) is unnecessary. Because this article builds on information that I have already been presented, a refresher might be in order. Here are links to help you get your bearings: Let's get started... Higher-Order Functions The notion of higher-order functions is an amazingly simple (and extraordinarily powerful!)
In order to support higher-order functions, a language must treat functions as first-class objects, but what does that mean? In general, programming languages impose restrictions on the ways in which computational elements can be manipulated. The Big Three Map.