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01 Introduction

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01 Introduction

Uploaded by

Khan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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You are on page 1/ 16

PROGRAMMING IN HASKELL

Chapter 1 - Introduction

0
The Software Crisis

 How can we cope with the size and complexity


of modern computer programs?

 How can we reduce the time and cost of


program development?

 How can we increase our confidence that the


finished programs work correctly?

1
Programming Languages

One approach to the software crisis is to design


new programming languages that:

 Allow programs to be written clearly, concisely,


and at a high-level of abstraction;

 Support reusable software components;

 Encourage the use of formal verification;


2
 Permit rapid prototyping;

 Provide powerful problem-solving tools.

Functional languages provide a particularly elegant


framework in which to address these goals.
3
What is a Functional Language?

Opinions differ, and it is difficult to give a precise


definition, but generally speaking:

 Functional programming is style of programming


in which the basic method of computation is the
application of functions to arguments;

 A functional language is one that supports and


encourages the functional style.
4
Example

Summing the integers 1 to 10 in Java:

total = 0;
for (i = 1; i  10; ++i)
total = total+i;

The computation method is variable assignment.

5
Example

Summing the integers 1 to 10 in Haskell:

sum [1..10]

The computation method is function application.

6
Historical Background

1930s:

Alonzo Church develops the lambda calculus,


a simple but powerful theory of functions.

7
Historical Background

1950s:

John McCarthy develops Lisp, the first functional


language, with some influences from the lambda
calculus, but retaining variable assignments.
8
Historical Background

1960s:

Peter Landin develops ISWIM, the first pure


functional language, based strongly on the
lambda calculus, with no assignments.
9
Historical Background

1970s:

John Backus develops FP, a functional


language that emphasizes higher-order
functions and reasoning about programs.
10
Historical Background

1970s:

Robin Milner and others develop ML, the first


modern functional language, which introduced
type inference and polymorphic types.
11
Historical Background

1970s - 1980s:

David Turner develops a number of lazy functional


languages, culminating in the Miranda system.
12
Historical Background

1987:

An international committee of researchers


initiates the development of Haskell, a
standard lazy functional language.
13
Historical Background

2003:

The committee publishes the Haskell 98 report,


defining a stable version of the language.
14
A Taste of Haskell

f [] = []
f (x:xs) = f ys ++ [x] ++ f zs
where
ys = [a | a  xs, a  x]
zs = [b | b  xs, b > x]

? 15

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