What is a Functional Language?

PROGRAMMING IN HASKELL
Opinions differ, and it is difficult to give a precise
definition, but generally speaking:

z Functional programming is style of programming

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

Chapter 1 - Introduction z A functional language is one that supports and

encourages the functional style.
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Example Example

Summing the integers 1 to 10 in Java: Summing the integers 1 to 10 in Haskell:

int total = 0; sum [1..10]

for (int i = 1; i  10; i++)
total = total + i;
The computation method is function application.

The computation method is variable assignment.

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Historical Background Historical Background

1930s: 1950s:

John McCarthy develops Lisp, the first functional

Alonzo Church develops the lambda calculus,
language, with some influences from the lambda
a simple but powerful theory of functions.
calculus, but retaining variable assignments.
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Historical Background Historical Background

1960s: 1970s:

Peter Landin develops ISWIM, the first pure John Backus develops FP, a functional
functional language, based strongly on the language that emphasizes higher-order
lambda calculus, with no assignments. functions and reasoning about programs.
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Historical Background Historical Background

1970s: 1970s - 1980s:

Robin Milner and others develop ML, the first

David Turner develops a number of lazy functional
modern functional language, which introduced
languages, culminating in the Miranda system.
type inference and polymorphic types.
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Historical Background Historical Background

1987: 1990s:

An international committee starts the development Phil Wadler and others develop type classes and
of Haskell, a standard lazy functional language. monads, two of the main innovations of Haskell.
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Historical Background Historical Background

2003: 2010-date:

The committee publishes the Haskell Report, Standard distribution, library support, new
defining a stable version of the language; an language features, development tools, use in
updated version was published in 2010. industry, influence on other languages, etc.
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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]

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