Gain insights into functional programming with OCaml and Haskell, explore lambda calculus, abstractions, and dataflows, and learn to apply these concepts to real-world scenarios, contrasting with Java.

ocaml_utop_haskell.tar.gz

OCaml

Functional programming is a paradigm that builds complete applications by breaking down programs into constituent functions that empowers developers to build fast, bug-resistant applications.

You’ll be introduced to functional programming with illustrative examples contrasting the more widely used imperative programming paradigm. You’ll review lambda calculus as an introduction to expressions, the building blocks of functional programs. You’ll continue with abstractions and complex data types before exploring common computation patterns. Next, you’ll learn how dataflows create whole programs out of existing functions. Finally, you’ll finish by applying your functional programming knowledge to various real-world scenarios. At each step, you’ll learn OCaml and Haskell, while contrasting imperative programming with Java.

By the end of this course, you’ll be prepared to use functional programming in your daily work and have the framework to know when to use either imperative or functional paradigms.

Mastering Functional Programming with OCaml and Haskell

# Challenge 1: Area of the largest circle

The following algebraic datatype represents a geometric shape. For our purposes here, we’ll only consider circles and rectangles.

```ocaml
type shape =  Circle of float
            | Rectangle of float * float
```
The following function calculates the area of a shape: 

```ocaml
let rec area s = match s with
                 | Circle r -> 3.14 *. r *. r
                 | Rectangle (w, h) -> w *. h
```


Write an OCaml function, max_circle, that takes as an input a list of shapes and returns the area of the largest circle in the list.

For example:

```ocaml
max_circle [] = 0.
max_circle [Circle 1.; Rectangle (1., 2.); Circle 2.; Rectangle (2., 3.)] = 12.56
```

In this challenge, try to think of how you could define a dataflow diagram to solve the problem.

Let's solve coding challenges to practice dataflow programming with functions.

Introduction

Expressions: Building Blocks of Functional Programs

Building Abstractions with Functions

Compound Data Types

Common Computation Patterns

Dataflow Programming with Functions

Applying Functional Programming to Various Domains

Conclusion

Appendix

Programming Challenges

Challenge 1: Area of the largest circle