What is Functional Programming?

Abstract

The past few years or so has seen a resurgence of interest in functional programming. In addition, some functional language features are finding there way into imperative languages. Why is this? There are couple of reasons; firstly, functional languages are well suited to certain problems. Secondly, functional languages have features that can help the developer to take advantage of the current and future generations of multi-core computers.

This presentation aims to provide you with insights into what Functional programming is and show you how functional languages can help you develop systems for multi-core machines. This presentation will use Scala (http://scala-lang.org) to demonstrate the concepts that will be introduced.


Speaker Biography: Barry Carr

Barry Carr has been developing software for since 1987. He taught himself to program using a BBC micro equipped with the Acorn Pascal ROMS and a copy of Findlay and Watts' Pascal: An Introduction to Methodical Programming, sadly, now out of print. Barry's first professional coding job was using a 4GL called Dataflex on ICL Quattros (yes, it was as bad as it sounds). From here, Barry went on to write software for some of the UK best known companies in a wide range of business sectors, including: Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Oil and Gas, Banking, Accounting, Legal Accounting, Public Sector and currently for the Mining and Geology sector. Barry has also developed and sold his own software components to other software developers. Always keen to keep his skills current, Barry devotes a lot of his personal time to technical development as well as keeping abreast of the current trends in the world of software development. Barry is also active in the software development community and has had several of his articles and book reviews published on the web and one article published in print. Barry was also one of the founding members of Scottish Developers. He is also one of the founder members of Northeast of Scotland .NET user group. When he isn't coding, Barry likes to spend his time with photography, reading, unashamedly listening to progressive rock, jazz and early music (especially whilst coding).