Getting all functional

Having done Biology at University rather than Computer Science, I regret having spent most of my career not really understanding why functional programming is so important.  I knew it was the oldest paradigm around, but assumed that it was just for mathematicians and scientists – business software needed something far better: imperative programming and object-orientation.  How naive was I?

Firstly through JavaScript, and then through delegates, anonymous delegates and Lambda expressions in C#, I was gradually introduced to a new world where you can pass functions around as though they are data.  Now that C# has an elegant and concise syntax for Lambdas, I feel rude if I don’t use it as much as I can!  I got to like this approach so much that I was easily seduced by the even more elegant functional syntax of F#.

F# has a really nice balance between the functional and the imperative, channelling you toward the former.  Whilst C# channels you toward the latter, it’s ever-increasing push towards being able to specify the “what” rather than having to manage the “how” has led it to embrace functional styles as well.  Monads, for example, in LINQ.

But why learn another language?  Certainly, if C# is getting all functional why bother with F#?  Surely there’s enough to keep up with besides learning a new language that might only come in useful every now and then.

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf hypothesised that we think only in the terms defined by our languages:

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language [...] all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.

Several people including Iverson and Graham have argued that this also applies to programming languages. Its difficult to understand how we can frame a computing problem except in the terms of the languages available to us.  I do know that learning Spanish helped me think differently – and it certainly helped me understand English better.  I believe that learning F# helps you understand C# better – and between them they form a more complete framework for approaching software development.  Especially since they’re so interoperable.

So even if its just an academic exercise – its worth it.  Let’s expand our minds!

We’ll leave a discussion about why functional programming is so good for a future post.  In the meantime, I can recommend both these books.  “Foundations” is more readable, and “Expert” more thorough (neither assume any previous F# knowledge).