Functional Programming For Dummies

Your guide to the functional programming paradigm 

Functional programming mainly sees use in math computations, including those used in Artificial Intelligence and gaming. This programming paradigm makes algorithms used for math calculations easier to understand and provides a concise method of coding algorithms by people who aren''t developers. Current books on the market have a significant learning curve because they''re written for developers, by developers—until now. 

Functional Programming for Dummies explores the differences between the pure (as represented by the Haskell language) and impure (as represented by the Python language) approaches to functional programming for readers just like you. The pure approach is best suited to researchers who have no desire to create production code but do need to test algorithms fully and demonstrate their usefulness to peers. The impure approach is best suited to production environments because it''s possible to mix coding paradigms in a single application to produce a result more quickly. Functional Programming For Dummies uses this two-pronged approach to give you an all-in-one approach to a coding methodology that can otherwise be hard to grasp.

• Learn pure and impure when it comes to coding
• Dive into the processes that most functional programmers use to derive, analyze and prove the worth of algorithms
• Benefit from examples that are provided in both Python and Haskell
• Glean the expertise of an expert author who has written some of the market-leading programming books to date

If you’re ready to massage data to understand how things work in new ways, you’ve come to the right place!

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 5

Part 1: Getting Started with Functional Programming 7

Chapter 1: Introducing Functional Programming 9

Defining Functional Programming 10

Understanding its goals 11

Using the pure approach 11

Using the impure approach 12

Considering Other Programming Paradigms 13

Imperative 13

Procedural 13

Object-oriented 14

Declarative 14

Using Functional Programming to Perform Tasks 15

Discovering Languages That Support Functional Programming 16

Considering the pure languages 16

Considering the impure languages 17

Finding Functional Programming Online 17

Chapter 2: Getting and Using Python 19

Working with Python in This Book 20

Creating better code 20

Debugging functionality 20

Defining why notebooks are useful 21

Obtaining Your Copy of Anaconda 21

Obtaining Analytics Anaconda 21

Installing Anaconda on Linux 22

Installing Anaconda on MacOS 23

Installing Anaconda on Windows 24

Understanding the Anaconda package 26

Downloading the Datasets and Example Code 27

Using Jupyter Notebook 28

Defining the code repository 28

Getting and using datasets 33

Creating a Python Application 34

Understanding cells 35

Adding documentation cells 36

Other cell content 38

Running the Python Application 38

Understanding the Use of Indentation 39

Adding Comments 41

Understanding comments 41

Using comments to leave yourself reminders 43

Using comments to keep code from executing 43

Closing Jupyter Notebook 44

Getting Help with the Python Language 45

Chapter 3: Getting and Using Haskell 47

Working with Haskell in This Book 48

Obtaining and Installing Haskell 48

Installing Haskell on a Linux system 50

Installing Hask