Perl has a mantra that goes, “Easy things are easy and hard things are possible.” In Haskell, the mantra is slightly different:
“Hard things are easy and the impossible just happened!”
If you’ve never seen Haskell before, you’re in for a real treat. It’s a language where functions can’t have side-effects, where variables
don’t vary, and where infinitely long lists are a topic suitable for chapter 2. To learn to program in Haskell is to bend your mind.
At its heart, functional programming is about correctness. Correct programs are ones that do what they’re supposed to do. While most
programming languages today are designed to churn out mostly-working code very quickly, the aim of functional languages is to produce actually-correct code at a reasonable pace. It’s a great tool for writing compilers, concurrent applications, secure systems, and algorithmic-heavy software for science or engineering. It’s also a good way to keep your robots from uprising against mankind.
Especially in the last few years, functional programming has been gaining significant momentum in industry. It is purported to be more modular, better at scaling, easier to parallelize, and leads to fewer bugs. Come see what the hype is all about and decide for yourself.
tl;dr
Who: Programmers interested in learning about functional programming.
What: A class on functional programming using Haskell.
Where: PSOne.
When: Sunday 2/24 at 6pm.
Why: Because lambdas.
How much: The class is free.
What else: Bring your laptop. You might also want to install Haskell Platform.
