We've kicked off C9 Lectures with a journey into the world of Functional Programming with functional language purist and high priest of the lambda calculus, Dr. Erik Meijer (you can thank Erik for many of the functional constructs that have shown up in languages like C# and VB.NET. When you use LINQ, thank Erik in addition to Anders).
We will release a new chapter in this series every Thursday.
In Chapter 7, Dr. Meijer teaches us about Higher-Order Functions. A function is called higher-order if it takes a function as an argument and returns a function as a result:
twice :: (a -> a) -> a -> a
twice f x = f (f x)
The function twice above is higher order because it takes a function (f x) as it first argument and returns a function (f(fx))
Dr. Meijer will elaborate on why higher-order functions are important and there are some really interesting side-effects of higher-order functions such as defining DSLs as collections of higher-order functions and using algebraic properties of higher-order functions to reason about programs.
You should watch these in sequence (or skip around depending on your curent level of knowledge in this domain):
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Now, we do have a textbook and you should go buy it: The great Graham Hutton's Programming in Haskell. We worked with the publisher, Cambridge University Press, to get all Niners a 20% discount on the book. Now, you don't need the book to learn a great deal from this lecture series since Graham's website has all the slides and samples from the book as well as answers to the exercises. That said, it's highly recommended reading and you should consider it.
The promotion code is 09HASK and it is vaild on both the Hardback:
9780521871723 and Paperback: 9780521692694. The catalog pages are:
Hardback:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521871723 and the paperback is:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521692694
Note: This special offer is valid until December 31, 2009
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