Key Information
About the content
In this course you will learn how to apply the functional programming style in the design of larger applications. You'll get to know important new functional programming concepts, from lazy evaluation to structuring your libraries using monads. We'll work on larger and more involved examples, from state space exploration to random testing to discrete circuit simulators. You’ll also learn some best practices on how to write good Scala code in the real world. Several parts of this course deal with the question how functional programming interacts with mutable state. We will explore the consequences of combining functions and state. We will also look at purely functional alternatives to mutable state, using infinite data structures or functional reactive programming. Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course you will be able to: - recognize and apply design principles of functional programs, - design functional libraries and their APIs, - competently combine functions and state in one program, - understand reasoning techniques for programs that combine functions and state, - write simple functional reactive applications. Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Functional Programming Principles in Scala: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1.
Syllabus
- Week 1 - For Expressions and Monads
We'll start by revisiting some concepts that we have learned from Principles of Functional Programming in Scala; collections, pattern matching, and functions. We'll then touch on for-comprehensions, a powerful way in Scala to traverse a list, process it, and r... - Week 2 - Lazy Evaluation
This week we'll revisit performance issues caused by combinatorial search, and we'll discover an important concept in functional programming that can these issues: laziness. We'll also learn a little bit about proofs on trees; in particular, we'll see how to e... - Week 3 - Functions and State
This week, we'll learn about state and side-effects. Through a rich example, we'll learn programming patterns for managing state in larger programs. We'll also learn about for-loops and while-loops in Scala. - Week 4 - Timely Effects
This week we'll learn a number of important programming patterns via examples, starting with the observer pattern, and then going on to functional reactive programming. We'll learn how latency can be modeled as an effect, and how latency can be handled with Sc...
Instructors
Martin Odersky
Professor
Computer Science
Content Designer
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, English: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) is a research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specialises in physical sciences and engineering.
One of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, the school was founded by the Swiss Federal Government with the stated mission to:
Educate engineers and scientists to the highest international standing
Be a national center of excellence in science and technology
Provide a hub for interaction between the scientific community and the industry
EPFL is considered one of the most prestigious universities in the world for engineering and sciences, ranking 17th overall and 10th in engineering in the 2015 QS World University Rankings; 34th overall and 12th in engineering in the 2015 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
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Coursera is a digital company offering massive open online course founded by computer teachers Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford University, located in Mountain View, California.
Coursera works with top universities and organizations to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in many subjects, including: physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and other subjects.
This is the continuation of principles of functional programming. The end of week 4 is a little bit confusing. very light introduction to concepts of functional reactive programming
This is the continuation of principles of functional programming. The end of week 4 is a little bit confusing. very light introduction to concepts of functional reactive programming
