An introduction to Functional Programming, Common Lisp, and Scheme. Code samples shown in Python, Ruby, F#, C#, and Scheme.
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Editor's Notes
Michael Norton - DocOnDev
LeanDog in Cleveland Oh - Agile Coaching, Transformation, Delivery
Years of Corporate Living Hell before that; Director/CTO in legal, banking, manufacturing
Primary Language is Ruby, plenty of Java, Scheme for fun; gateway drug to Clojure
I am uniquely qualified to give this presentation based on two criteria; I wrote it and I have the microphone
SICP Study Groups -
twitter conversation -> Jim Weirich, Dave Hoover, others; Software Craftsmanship North America; August 2009
Filled up fast; I started the Gamma Group
Who has started this book?
Who has completed this book?
Had to put a cap on the size of the group
Capped at 15; ended up with 18
Week one - we were all excited and ready to go; did our reading.
Introduction - read first section of first chapter; Jim Weirich did a kick-off phone call.
Week two - Introduced to atoms and pairs. Reading. Exercises were primarily discussion-based.
Fairly significant drop-off rate
Week 3 - Iterative versus Recursive; reading; actual problem sets
Week 4 - Pairs, car, cdr, anonymous functions (lambda), linear geometry
Group size leveled out at about, well... 3
Week 5/6; lists, recursion over lists, trees, dotted-tail notation
Week 7; sets; union, append, add, subtract, compare, etc.
Week 8 was all about differential equations and derivatives
I got lost in the math; 20+ years since I studied calculus
There were no more than two of us on the weekly phone calls and I was falling way behind the other two guys.
Alpha and Beta merged into a single group of about 5 active people; Gamma continues with the two remaining
May be great for some.
I found it relatively unapproachable. Even simple problems were presented in a difficult to consume manner.
Given the tremendous dropout rate, I suspect many others felt as I did.
I found these texts to be more approachable
Little / Seasoned / Reasoned almost too approachable. Can be considered condescending.
50 pages into Little Schemer, I understood the Scheme list structures and their processing.
50 pages into SICP, I had atoms, pairs, and a nagging sense of self-doubt.
Main Program is a function which receives input and provides output
Main program is defined in terms of other functions, which are defined in terms of other functions, and so on.
At the lowest level, functions are language primitives
Functions are first class
Main Program is a function which receives input and provides output
Main program is defined in terms of other functions, which are defined in terms of other functions, and so on.
At the lowest level, functions are language primitives
Functions are first class
Which means it supports Higher-order functions
What are higher order functions?
Functions which take functions as parameters and functions that return functions
There are no assignment statements; variables are immutable - purely functional
A function call takes input and calculates a result; altering no state in the environment
As a result, there are no (or at least considerably fewer) side-effects
Technically a purely functional application is impossible; with no side-effects, there is no means of providing input or receiving output. If it did exist, nobody would ever know.
A call to a function can be replaced with its value without changing the application behavior
Recursion is a primary control structure for iteration
Some functional languages allow no other loop structure
In Scheme, recursion is idiomatic, but there are do and for constructs
Symbolic Expression - convention representing semi-structured data in human-readable form
a.k.a - s-expressions
Originally intended for data only. M-expressions were supposed to be for methods.
Formalization came too late and use of s-expressions was idiomatic for data and methods
Type checking at run-time
Perl, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Objective-C
Computer representation of a mathematical finite sequence or tuple
We’re all familiar with this concept; List Objects, Arrays, Linked Lists
Functional Languages favor immutability
Static list structures - only allows inspection and enumeration
Static Scope - variable always refers to its top-level environment
Bindings are able to be understood in isolation; no concern about context of invocation
Static Scope - variable always refers to its top-level environment
Bindings are able to be understood in isolation; no concern about context of invocation
Idiomatic to Scheme
Scheme does have a do construct, but tail recursion is preferred
Last call of function (tail call) is a recursive call - easily transformed to iterations
Optimization of stack space allowing for deeper (infinite?) recursion
Improves efficiency for complex calls
Idiomatic to Scheme
Scheme does have a do construct, but tail recursion is preferred
Last call of function (tail call) is a recursive call - easily transformed to iterations
Optimization of stack space allowing for deeper (infinite?) recursion
Improves efficiency for complex calls
Common Lisp has different namespaces for functions and data
Common Lisp allows function and variable to have the same name - requires special notation to refer to a function as a value
Scheme data and procedures can be bound and manipulated by same primitives
Scheme does support creation/installation of namespaces; out of scope for presentation
What is a Kata?
Relatively simple problem domains; repeat them over and over again, learning and improving as you go
Relatively simple Kata put together by Roy Osherove
This is a simple description of the requirements
There are additional requirements to fail for negatives, improve error messages, exclude numbers greater than a given size, allow multiple delimiters, allow complex delimiters
All set.
All set.
All set.
All set.
All set.
All set.
All set.
Michael Norton - DocOnDev
ThoughtWorks for 6 months - currently out of Chicago Office
LeanDog out of Cleveland before that
Years of Corporate Living Hell before that; Director/CTO in legal, banking, manufacturing
Primary Language (for the moment) is Java, some delivery in Ruby, Scheme for fun
I am uniquely qualified to give this presentation based on two criteria; I wrote it and I have the microphone
schemeunit is a unit testing framework for Scheme. I am running it in DrScheme, available in the PLT Scheme sight. All made available in the “show notes”
Provides capability for test suites. Will show simple tests.
This is exactly what we expected!
Let’s make it pass.
schemeunit is a unit testing framework for Scheme. I am running it in DrScheme, available in the PLT Scheme sight. All made available in the “show notes”
Provides capability for test suites. Will show simple tests.
Yahoo!
Abbreviated header
Added a second test - String with single number should return number
Again; expected.
Let’s make it pass.
cond => scheme conditional Like a case or switch statement where the else is our otherwise
string-length? => scheme function returns boolean
string->number => scheme function
Yahoo!
Abbreviated header
Added a second test - String with single number should return number
Again; expected.
Let’s make it pass.
cond => scheme conditional Like a case or switch statement where the else is our otherwise
string-length? => scheme function returns boolean
string->number => scheme function
Yahoo!
This is a simple description of the requirements
There are additional requirements to fail for negatives, improve error messages, exclude numbers greater than a given size, allow multiple delimiters, allow complex delimiters
Let’s see if it can do strings with more numbers
What do you think?
Got one for free - I don’t necessarily like when that happens
This is a simple description of the requirements
There are additional requirements to fail for negatives, improve error messages, exclude numbers greater than a given size, allow multiple delimiters, allow complex delimiters
Now we’ve added the Custom Delimiter
This is exactly what we expected!
Let’s make it pass.
We’ve added a parameter to the str-calc function, but this paramater is optional. When not provided, it defaults to a comma as indicated
Hash-Whack Notation - escape sequence
So now we have custom delimiter
Now we’ve added the Custom Delimiter
So now we have custom delimiter
Ok - now we have to handle the custom delimiter as a prefix to the string as opposed to as a separate parameter.
Now we’ve added the Custom Delimiter as a prefix
I’m going to ask you to take a leap of faith with me in the interest of time.
We’ve added a parameter to the str-calc function, but this paramater is optional. When not provided, it defaults to a comma as indicated
Hash-Whack Notation - escape sequence
Delimiter parser was also written as part of this kata
Test drove it just as we did all the other code.