Why is functional programming important?


(Information Science Expert) Haskell, Lisp, OCaml, etc. They focus on how to “generate” data from a given data.

Ideal components (PCF):

  • Basic data and their operations

  • Variables

  • Conditional branching

  • Function definitions

    • Recursive function definitions
  • Function usage

  • Programs can be represented as graphs

    • Values, branches, operators, and functions are represented as vertices in the graph
    • Variables are represented as points
  • There are some rules:

    • The basic rule is depth-first search
    • If you encounter a box, go back once
    • When encountering a variable, assign a value to all connections it has