[racket] Introductory talk on Contracts and Functional Contracts, with most examples in Racket

If you have the standard, garden-variety collection of FPers, 
you will get huge-pushback because your contracts look like 
(and can be expressed as) types. Some smart-a..k will say 
"but I can do this in Haskell" and the rest of the room will
nod their wise heads. 

1. Always use contracts that cannot be expressed as types
in an obvious type system. 

2. Show a higher-order contract and flavors that push this
idea hard. Consider using d/dx or indefinite adaptive integral 
as functions on (real? -> real?) -> (real?^n -> real?) AND THEN
say that the d/dx function approximates the slope up to epsilon
or that the adaptive integrator approximates the area up to some
blah. 

3. For the smack-down, contracts tend to reveal some things that 
are "intensional" (part of the implementation). Also, contracts 
can easily shift the algorithmic complexity if you're careless. 
See binary-search but impose sorted? as a predicate on the vector
that flows into the function. 

Good luck -- Matthias








On Sep 3, 2013, at 2:37 AM, Daniel Prager <daniel.a.prager at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm giving this talk 
> 
>    http://www.slideshare.net/DanielPrager/introduction-to-contracts-and-functional-contracts
> 
> to the local functional programming user group in a few days.
> 
> Any feedback or corrections appreciated.
> 
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Dan
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