BFPG Monthly Meetup

FP in Scala Chapters 3&4 - Sean Chalmers

Chapter 3: Functional Data Structures

In this chapter, we’ll learn the concept of functional data structures and how to work with them. We’ll use this as an opportunity to introduce how data types are defined in functional programming, learn about the related technique of pattern matching, and get practice writing and generalizing pure functions.

Chapter 4: Functional Error Handling

In this chapter, we’ll learn the basic principles for raising and handling errors functionally. The big idea is that we can represent failures and exceptions with ordinary values, and we can write higher-order functions that abstract out common patterns of error handling and recovery.

A slideshow toolchain with ReST, Pandoc and LaTeX Beamer - Fraser Tweedale

Giving technical presentations is a worthwhile and satisfying endeavour, but producing a quality slide deck can be a frustrating and time consuming activity. It needn't be.

In this talk I will show you my slide toolchain which, in brief, turns ReStructuredText (a lightweight markup format) into a PDF via Pandoc (a "universal document converter" written in Haskell), allowing me to focus on the structure and content of my presentations and not worry about formatting.

We will cover basic formatting, math, code, images, Unicode, foreign scripts, slide appearance and themes, and how to escape from ReST and access the full power of LaTeX when needed. There will also be a brief detour into Pandoc internals and a discussion of ways to vary the toolchain for alternative markup language preferences or output formats.