Revisiting "Why FP Matters" by John Hughes

• What we'll do
To kick off our new group, it seems appropriate to answer a question many have on first encountering functional programming:

"Seems interesting, but pretty different. What can I do with FP that makes it really useful?"

Rather than make up our own answers, we'll be revisiting a 1990 paper titled "Why FP Matters" by John Hughes, the inventor of QuickCheck and one of the designers of Haskell.

FP is all about the code, so we'll be discussing many examples from the paper on useful abstractions, higher-order functions, and lazy evaluation.

If "Why FP Matters" has been in your to-read folder, but you haven't had the time to dig in, come along and enjoy a taste with the FP Chicago group.

The talk will be given by co-organizer Greg Baran, a software consultant specializing in performance, and a Cub fan since 1959.

• What to bring

• Important to know