Presentation: "Functional Languages 101: What's the Fuss?"

Time: Wednesday 10:30 - 11:30

Location: Rutherford Room

Abstract:

Discussion about functional languages as well as new languages in this class are becoming increasingly common. Many current software developers have little to no experience with programming with these languages. Through this talk, you will learn the key differentiators of functional languages and how to approach problems in a functional style. The talk will also describe some of the factors motivating the strengthening interest in functional languages so you can answer the question of "What's the Fuss?".

Keywords: Languages, Functional Programming, Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Concurrency

Target audience: Software developers in OO or other imperative languages with interest in but little or no experience with functional programming languages.

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Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks

 Rebecca  Parsons

Dr. Parsons has more than 20 years of application development experience in industries ranging from telecommunications to emergent internet services. She has been published in language and artificial intelligence media, served on numerous program committees, and currently reviews academic articles for several journals.

Before coming to ThoughtWorks she worked as an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida. She also worked as director's post doctoral fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory researching issues in parallel and distributed computation, genetic algorithms, computational biology and non-linear dynamical systems.

Dr. Parsons holds a [Ph.D] in Computer Science from Rice University.