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43 lines
2.4 KiB
43 lines
2.4 KiB
5 years ago
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% -*- mode: latex; coding: utf-8; TeX-master: ../thesis -*-
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% !TEX TS-program = pdflatexmk
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% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
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% !TEX root = ../thesis.tex
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In the last decade, concepts from functional programming have grown in
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importance within the wider, non-functional programming community.
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Often it is recommended to learn a purely functional programming language
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such as Haskell to become familiar with these concepts.
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However, many programmers struggle with the double duty
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of learning a new paradigm and a new syntax at the same time.
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This paper proposes that by learning functional programming with a
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multi-paradigm programming language and a familiar syntax it is possible
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to lower this effort.
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To achieve this goal, the programming language Go has been chosen due to
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its syntactical simplicity and familiarity.
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However, a downside of Go is the lack of a built-in list type, as lists take a
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central role in functional programming. Although this is remediated by Go's slices,
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they are not accompanied by any higher-order list processing functions --- `map', `filter', and `fold' to name a
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few --- that are present in every functional programming language (and many
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other languages too).
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Due to the absence of polymorphism, in order to provide these higher-order functions in
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a user-friendly way it is necessary to build these functions into the compiler.
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Furthermore, this paper adopts a definition of pure functional programming and
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introduces `funcheck', a static code analysis tool that is designed to
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report constructs that are non-functional.
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In conclusion, I demonstrate that with the help of the newly built-in
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functions `fmap', `filter', `foldr', `foldl' and
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`prepend', as well as `funcheck' to lint code, Go proves itself to be a
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suitable language for getting started with functional programming.
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The primary factor for this is reflected in the Go idiom `clear is better than clever'.
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While functional Go code is more verbose when compared to functional languages, it
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is also more obvious about its inner workings.
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At the same time, it also illustrates why there is no way around learning a
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language such as Haskell if fluency with functional programming concepts
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is desired. The main reasons are that, although it may be unusual at first, Haskell's
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syntax is extremely concise, and that the language's design --- the type system,
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pattern matching, the purity guarantees and more --- provides a very effective toolset
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for purely functional programming.
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