[portland] Functional Programming Resources

[kirby urner]

> On Jul 5, 2011 6:10 PM, "Rich Shepard" <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to learn more about functional programming in Python than is
>> covered in Mark Lutz's "Learning Python." Please suggest web pages, pdf
>> docs, or books I should read.
>>
>> Rich

Search on itertools a lot for tutorials.  Anything lazy evaluation
tends to feel functional.

But then I always associate function with reading multi-dimensional
arrays as native primitives and pushing them through pipelines.  Is J
functional?  That's the one I'm most familiar with, inheriting from
APL.

The purists on math-thinking-l (a functionalist holdout) will likely
tell you to abandon ship before it's too late.

Python is their nemesis (sounds melodramatic), a an agile "imperative
language" and there's no salvaging it with "little lambda".

Basically, it's frustrating that code may get as difficult to untangle
as the ecosystems it models, whereas mathematically provably correct
code should be easier to maintain.

The functional purists find OO to "unprovable" so shy away.

But then I suppose all CS grads know this?  I'm tracking from a
philosophy angle (we like to watch the imperativists and
functionalists duke it out).

Kirby