The "Thinking Functionally" Series

This series of posts will introduce you to the fundamentals of functional programming -- what does it really mean to "program functionally", and how this approach differs from object oriented or imperative programming.

• Thinking Functionally: Introduction. A look at the basics of functional programming.

• Mathematical functions. The impetus behind functional programming.

• Function Values and Simple Values. Binding not assignment.

• How types work with functions. Understanding the type notation.

• Currying. Breaking multi-parameter functions into smaller one-parameter functions.

• Partial application. Baking-in some of the parameters of a function.

• Function associativity and composition. Building new functions from existing ones.

• Defining functions. Lambdas and more.

• Function signatures. A function signature can give you some idea of what it does.

• Organizing functions. Nested functions and modules.

• Attaching functions to types. Creating methods the F# way.

• Worked example: A stack based calculator. Using combinators to build functionality.