Tagged Questions

5
votes
2answers
272 views

Is Haskell/Clojure actually unsuited for dynamic systems such as particle simulation?

I've been told in previous questions that functional programming languages are unsuited for dynamic systems such as a physics engine, mainly because it's costly to mutate objects. How realistic is ...
8
votes
9answers
547 views

Resources for improving your comprehension of recursion? [closed]

I know what recursion is (when a patten reoccurs within itself, typically a function that calls itself on one of its lines, after a breakout conditional... right?), and I can understand recursive ...
8
votes
0answers
434 views

Why (or why not) are existential types considered bad practice in functional programming? [closed]

I've sometimes heard that using existential data types is sort of a bad practice in functional programming and that there are ways how to avoid it. I'd like to know, if it is really true, what are the ...
5
votes
1answer
326 views

Functional reactive programming — is Fay expressive enough?

So I'm doing a fairly involved javascript/html client with lots of ajax calls and other involvements of callback-ism. I'm entertaining the thought of using Fay for this purpose. I'm aware of Elm. ...
4
votes
2answers
178 views

Who first coined the term Higher Order Function and/or First Class Citizen?

I've come to understand that long before Haskell, O'Caml or LISP, higher order functions were an academic research subject and in mathematics, Schönfinkel (in 1967) and Haskell Curry (in 1968) already ...
5
votes
2answers
317 views

What's a good math textbook to have on my desk while studying Haskell? [closed]

I just started learning Haskell and it seems like you can't get too far in the language without being comfortable ( or at least exposed ) to certain branches of mathematics. Unfortunately I have major ...
5
votes
6answers
2k views

Which self balancing binary tree would you recommend?

I'm learning Haskell and as an exercise I'm making binary trees. Having made a regular binary tree, I want to adapt it to be self balancing. So: Which is most efficient? Which is easiest to ...
8
votes
2answers
265 views

What's the difference in content between Chris Okasaki's 1996 thesis and 1999 book, Purely Functional Data Structures?

I want to read Purely Functional Data Structures. I've easily found the thesis (which is freely available as a PDF), but see that there's a book available also. So I'd like to know what the ...
7
votes
1answer
161 views

Better to use error monad with validation in your monadic functions, or implement your own monad with validation directly in your bind?

I'm wondering what's better design wise for usability/maintainability, and what's better as far as fitting with the community. Given the data model: type Name = String data Amount = Out | Some | ...
7
votes
3answers
182 views

Devising test of Haskell's value/reference semantics

In imperative languages, it is trivial to devise a programming test of language's use of "value semantics" or "reference semantics". One could do the following and check the value of a (where Vertex ...
26
votes
2answers
961 views

Misconceptions about purely functional languages?

I often encounter the following statements / arguments: Pure functional programming languages do not allow side effects (and are therefore of little use in practice because any useful program does ...
18
votes
4answers
939 views

Why do some functional languages need software transactional memory?

Functional languages, by definition, should not maintain state variables. Why, then, do Haskell, Clojure, and others provide software transactional memory (STM) implementations? Is there a conflict ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views

Fastest Functional Language

I've recently been delving into functional programming especially Haskell and F#, the prior more so. After some googling around I could not find a benchmark comparison of the more prominent functional ...
3
votes
2answers
263 views

What's the benefit of the Nothing constructor in Haskell?

I'm new to Haskell and I'm not really sold on the Nothing constructor. It sounds like just another silent fail that's going to create headaches down the line. It seems much more useful to throw an ...
26
votes
12answers
2k views

Is Haskell's type system an obstacle to understanding functional programming?

I'm studying Haskell for the purpose of understanding functional programming, with the expectation that I'll apply the insight that I gain in other languages (Groovy, Python, JavaScript mainly.) I ...
30
votes
5answers
2k views

Critique of the IO monad being viewed as a state monad operating on the world

The IO monad in Haskell is often explained as a state monad where the state is the world. So a value of type IO a monad is viewed as something like worldState -> (a, worldState). Some time ago I ...
1
vote
0answers
187 views

Boost Phoenix or Haskell GHC generating C [closed]

I am working on an iOS app that does some number crunching in a variety of areas that would greatly benefit from a functional programming approach, though much of the rest of the application is ...
2
votes
2answers
493 views

Using foldr to append two lists together (Haskell)

I have been given the following question as part of a college assignment. Due to the module being very short, we are using only a subset of Haskell, without any of the syntactic sugar or idiomatic ...
8
votes
5answers
380 views

What's the proper term for a function inverse to a constructor - to unwrap a value from a data type?

Edit: I'm rephrasing the question a bit. Apparently I caused some confusion because I didn't realize that the term destructor is used in OOP for something quite different - it's a function invoked ...
13
votes
4answers
569 views

Unit testing statically typed functional code

I wanted to ask you people, in which cases it makes sense to unit test statically typed functional code, as written in haskell, scala, ocaml, nemerle, f# or haXe (the last is what I am really ...
31
votes
5answers
2k views

what is the purpose of arrows?

I am learning functionnal programming with Haskell, and I try to grab concepts by first understanding why do I need them. I would like to know the goal of arrows in functional programming languages. ...
9
votes
8answers
1k views

Why isn't functional language syntax more close to human language?

I'm interested in functional programming and decided to get head to head with Haskell. My head hurts... but I'll eventually get it... I have one curiosity though, why is the syntax so cryptic (in lack ...
11
votes
2answers
260 views

FP for simulation and modelling

I'm about to start a simulation/modelling project. I already know that OOP is used for this kind of projects. However, studying Haskell made me consider using the FP paradigm for modelling a system of ...
1
vote
2answers
604 views

Performance of concurrent software on multicore processors [closed]

Recently I have often read that, since the trend is to build processors with multiple cores, it will be increasingly important to have programming languages that support concurrent and parallel ...
20
votes
11answers
5k views

Scheme vs Haskell for an Introduction to Functional Programming?

I am comfortable with programming in C and C#, and will explore C++ in the future. I may be interested in exploring functional programming as a different programming paradigm. I am doing this for fun, ...
16
votes
2answers
491 views

Different ways to see a monad

While learning Haskell I have faced a lot of tutorials trying to explain what are monads and why monads are important in Haskell. Each of them used analogies so it would be easier to catch the ...
13
votes
11answers
823 views

What should I understand before I try to understand functional programming?

I've been Learning Me A Haskell For Great Good because I thought it looked interesting. Of course, I'm completely sold on the idea that functional programming will end world hunger, bring about world ...
23
votes
2answers
1k views

Why did the Haskell committee choose monads to represent IO?

The Clean language uses uniqueness types to handle IO in a purely functional setting. Why did the Haskell committee go with monads instead? Were there other proposals for handling state that the ...
-2
votes
2answers
396 views

Where are functional languages used? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Functional Programming in Commercial Software Which problems domains are more suited to functional programming solutions I just wonder where do functional programming ...
6
votes
2answers
206 views

Language that can statically ensure a map's fields are present

If data is simple and objects are complex, I'm curious if there are any existing statically typed languages that would be able to augment(?) a map type into a type with guaranteed fields. I realize ...
8
votes
3answers
579 views

Is there any material on practical programming in Coq?

I just finished reading Coq in a Hurry, which is a very good tutorial I found online. I got very exited about Coq. Is there any material on practical programming in Coq? Like printing the result of a ...
7
votes
3answers
300 views

choosing a functional language platform for a new project

I have been writing code for a few years now and I don't believe I can claim to have a complete knowledge in this job yet. My experience primarily rolls around C# related areas with a decent ...
8
votes
11answers
1k views

Is Object Oriented stuff really that important? [closed]

For years, I have been doing Algorithmic stuff, writing scalable data structures for internet search, for example Randomized Binary Search Trees for Auto Recommendation, BitMaps, Wisdom of Crowd based ...
15
votes
4answers
531 views

Why is it good not to rely on changing state?

This question arises out of the question Is Haskell worth learning? Generally a few often repeated statements are made, about how Haskell improves your coding skills in other languages, and ...
13
votes
5answers
1k views

What is the most compatible, widely used production language to export knowledge and skills gained from Haskell?

I like Haskell, plain and simple. While Haskell is used in production software, it's not especially widely deployed from what I've seen. What is the most similar and still widely used language in ...
7
votes
4answers
954 views

A programming language that does not allow IO. Haskell is not a pure language

Are there any 100% pure languages (as I describe in the Stack Overflow post) out there already and if so, could they feasibly be used to actually do stuff? i.e. do they have an implementation? I'm not ...
22
votes
6answers
7k views

Haskell AND Lisp vs. Haskell OR Lisp

I currently code with C, C++, and Python. I'm wanting to pick up a functional programming language, and right now I'm leaning toward Haskell. I do NOT want to start a "Haskell vs Lisp" war here; what ...
12
votes
5answers
448 views

How should someone used to FP thinking read imperative code?

I graduated from university about five months ago, and have been working in a local startup for past four months. While at university, I studied Haskell, F# etc on my own. We were taught Java at the ...
15
votes
2answers
863 views

Is return-type-(only)-polymorphism in Haskell a good thing?

One thing that I've never quite come to terms with in Haskell is how you can have polymorphic constants and functions whose return type cannot be determined by their input type, like class Foo a ...
9
votes
4answers
387 views

STDOUT and its impurity

I've read a lot of books and articles about functional programming and still ashamed of not being able to understand for sure some very basic concepts. One of the main ideas of functional programming ...
10
votes
5answers
380 views

Introducing functional programming into your development environment

This is a long story but I will try to summarize it as best I can. We are a .NET shop that writes software for a variety of different types of funds. For example, we write health claims management ...
9
votes
3answers
908 views

Getters and Setters in Functional Languages

One of the tenets of Functional Programming is the use of Pure Functions. A Pure function is one that is side-effect free and referentially transparent. Getters are not referentially transparent - ...
31
votes
9answers
3k views

Good videos and podcasts on Functional Programming? [closed]

Can you recommend some good downloadable podcasts and videos on Functional Programming languages. Pure and non pure: Scala, Haskell, ML, Miranda, Scheme, Lisp, Erlang, Clojure, Jaskell, Functional ...
9
votes
5answers
734 views

Would it be ok if I decide to write all my Ruby as if it were Haskell?

Given that Ruby has good list operation capabilities in-built - reduce, map, select, collect etc. It has Procs, Blocks and Lambdas, and has nice iteration support (the each family), would it be a bad ...
50
votes
5answers
4k views

How do you design programs in Haskell or other functional programming languages?

I have some experience in object oriented programming languages like c# or ruby. I know how to design a program in object oriented style, how to create classes and objects, and how to define relations ...
8
votes
3answers
996 views

Ur/Web new purely functional language for web programming?

I came across the Ur/Web project during my search for web frameworks for Haskell-like languages. It looks like a very interesting project done by one person. Basically, it is a domain-specific purely ...
12
votes
3answers
2k views

Haskell opensource projects

I'm in process of getting myself into the realm of functional programming, and for the practical part of this task, I've picked up Haskell (mainly because it seems to be pure functional language). Now ...
17
votes
3answers
5k views

Haskell vs Erlang for web services

I am looking to start an experimental project using a functional language and am trying to decide beween Erlang and Haskell, and both have some points that I really like. I like Haskell's strong ...