Down The Oregon Trail with Functional C#

In 1971, three students from Minnesota thought they could liven up a history lecture by creating a computer game for the students to play, and after several days of work in HP Time Share BASIC, they came up with what turned out to be a significant milestone in the history of computer games - Oregon Trail.

Oregon Trail is often regarded as one of the first great computer games, as well as being the originator of a franchise that is still running to this day. It was effectively also one of the first instances of both Shareware and a Commercial home release of(depending on the version).

My interest though, isn't just in historical computer games, it's also .NET and Functional Programming. I want to use this as a worked example of one of my passions - Functional Programming in C#! The challenge I've set myself is to redevelop Oregon Trail into C# using the following restrictions:

• Near 100% unit test coverage
• No variables can change state once set
• No statements (for, foreach, if, where, etc.) unless there literally is no way of avoiding them

Simon will also be demonstrating a few of the tricks Functional Programming can offer, like Higher-order functions, functional flows with simple Monads and Tail Recursion. There should also be a bit of retro computing fun, while we're at it.

Venue
This meeting is at BrightHR in the Peninsula Building which is close to Victoria railway station & the AO Arena.

There will be someone in the foyer who will sign you in and then tell you how to find the venue.

This is a free event - there is no charge for a ticket or for the refreshments.

This event is in the form of a talk so you don't need to bring a laptop.

We often get enough RSVP's for there to be a waiting list; the list has always cleared by the early part of the week of the talk, but this relies on you releasing your ticket if you can no longer attend. Please remember to do this if your plans change.

Please ensure we have an email address that you do look at, so we can let you know of any last minute changes; and please use your full name on the site as it's the only way we, or the fire service, can account for you in the case of an evacuation/emergency/fire etc.

Catering will be provided (pizza and drinks). If you have any special dietary requirements please let us know via the event chat.

If you would need assistance to leave the building in the event of an evacuation then please let us know via the event chat.

Note for recruitment professionals - we don't exclude recruiters from our meetings but we would ask you to contact Rick Garner for a brief chat before you start attending.

Schedule
Doors open from 18:00
Intro and welcome 18:40
Speaker 18:50 (with a break at some point )
Wrap-up & prize raffle 20.45
Close ~21:00
(Don't feel bad if you have to leave early for a train/bus/lift home - no one will be offended)

We then adjourn to a local bar for a drink and a natter - this bit is optional but everyone is welcome to join us!