Latest change Dec 5, 2019
The purpose of this course is to give the students a solid understanding of functional programming, its applications, and its strengths and weaknesses. This includes knowledge of recursion, advanced data structures, modern type systems, higher order functions, lazy vs. eager evaluation, the importance of freedom of side effects, how to regain stateful (imperative-like) programming while retaining freeedom of side effects, and more. We will also give short orientations of lambda calculus and type inference, in order to enhance the understanding of the functional programming paradigm.
In order to reach these goals, the course will be based on the functional programming language F# (see also Wikipedia). This is a modern functional language, and learning it thoroughly will give you good knowledge of all the things mentioned above. It will also show how powerful the functional programming paradigm can be from a software engineering point of view - this paradigm provides, arguably, the best support for writing concise, reusable, and safe programs. F# originates from Microsoft Research, and it is a member of the .NET family of programming languages. Thus, it is likely that it will become widespread in the future: notably, it is a first class language in Visual Studio (from VS2010).
It is recommended that you read the part in the literature that will be covered before the lecture, see the detailed schedule. Thus, you will be able to get more out of the lecture.
Don't be afraid to be active during the lectures. The dumbest questions are the ones never asked.
Be aware that it can be hard to finish the labs in time if you show up unprepared. The lab course (LAB1) is 2hp, which corresponds to 53 hours of work, whereas the scheduled time for the labs is 16 hours: thus, you are expected to spend most of the work with the labs outside the schedule! Therefore, we strongly recommend that you prepare well before you come to the lab session.
The course can also be followed as a distance course, although it is not formally offered as such. Everything that should be needed is provided through this web page: plan for lectures with lecture material, directions for reading the course literature, laborations, suggested projects, link for downloading the F# compiler, etc. The teachers will be available for questions via e-mail. We will not provide lectures directly over the web, though, and the written exam must be taken at the Mälardalen University campus unless it can be arranged with a local university or similar.