Functional Programming

This activity has the following desired goals:

• Learning about functional programming (A, M).

Topics to be discussed

• computing with pure functions and data flow.
• immutable data (and data structures).
• functions as values.
• comparison of the imperitive and functional way of doing something (with an example).

Sample algorithms

Imperative Style

val numList = ArrayBuffer(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
var result = 0;
repeatFor(numList) { n =>
    if (n % 2 == 0) {
        result += n * 10
    }
}
println(result)

Functional Style

val result = ArrayBuffer(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
    .filter(n => n % 2 == 0)
    .map(a => a * 10)
    .reduce((a, b) => a + b)

println(result)