Functional Programming in 40 Minutes

GOTO Copenhagen 2024

Functional programming has finally escaped from academia. These days developers are building real systems in functional programming languages like Clojure, Scala, Elixir and F#. Functional techniques are also seeping into more traditional languages like Java and Ruby. Unfortunately somewhere along the way functional programming has also developed a reputation for being deep and mysterious: Good programs achieve the Zen-like state of being functional which somehow involves immutability, higher order functions and being referentially transparent.

In this talk Russ Olsen will strip away the cloud of mystery to uncover the simple — and wonderful — truth about functional programming: It can make your programming life easier by letting you do simple things simply while also providing you with the sharp tools you need to tackle more complex problems.