[plt-scheme] Can you study HTDP to satisfy the goal to learn Functional Programming?

On Sep 9, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Noel Welsh wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
>> Since HTDP is %75 pure FP, is that a good place to start? Having read
>> 50 pages or so into it, I feel like the data-driven approach makes
>> sense.
>
> I think the data-driven / HtDP approach is the core of FP style.
> There is a lot more to FPt, but that is the essential part.  You could
> write the same code in Scheme. ML, Haskell etc. with only minor
> differences due to syntax.


1. HtDP is not just about functional programming. The design ideas
work in many contexts (Ruby, Java).

2. HtDP is FP as you can find it in Erlang, Haskell, ML, Lisp, AND
Scheme, etc. In each of these languages you will find additional
FP ideas that are specific to a family:

  Haskell: a type system in which you can write a mail client
  ML: a functor system
  Erlang: parallelism out of your ears
  Lisp/Scheme: macro systems that make programmers an order of
     magnitude more productive

Depending on your interests, you can use HtDP to explore any and
all of these. -- Matthias