An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus by Greg Michaelson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Probably, imperative programming is the inevitable professional path of the budding programmer that picks up this book. However, the career programmer can benefit from seeing how “the other half lives”. As one who has trained and hired software engineers over the years, I have seen that a mindset of iteration and conditional statements can often lead to inefficient designs. Someone with only an introductory knowledge of LISP or Haskell or general declarative principles as outlined here often can come up with more compact and efficient designs in object-oriented programming (OOP). The excellent chapter here on recursion highlights a key concept I find taught better through functional programming. I recommend that those serious about OOP read this as a “mind hack” to spark innovation and a fresh assessment of the tools at hand.
(Look for my full review to appear in MAA Reviews: http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/)
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