I don't have this "computer science". :) You don't need it for functional
programming. I was trying to program "functionally" in C, 20 years ago
(after asm), but I didn't know there was a whole programming paradigm
supporting what I kept wanting to do. (I favored recursion, use of ternary
conditional, wanted closures but didn't know what that was, avoided mutable
state...)

However when I started learning OCaml (my first FP language), it was still
a steep learning curve. I needed to develop enough familiarity with the
idioms to use them with less mental friction. That takes time. I think
imperative techniques can be easier to grasp, much like a GUI is easier at
first, but it doesn't scale as well -- if you stick with the GUI you limit
yourself. You don't need compsci, but I think there's more time to gain
familiarity -- though in my case it might have been more unlearning that
took the time.


On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Mr. Herr <misterherr@freenet.de> wrote:

>
> Am 28.05.2013 03:17, schrieb Francois Berenger:
> > On 05/27/2013 09:38 PM, Mr. Herr wrote:
> >>
> >> Am 27.05.2013 10:53, schrieb Erik de Castro Lopo:
> >>> Mr. Herr wrote:
> >>>> I think the biggest problem is you generally can only learn FP and/or
> Ocaml at
> >>>> university, because:
> >>>>
> >>>> The FP terminology is at first (and a long time after starting
> learning it),
> >>>> without
> >>>> a teacher, not understandable.
> >>> Sorry, that's simply not true.
> >>>
> >>> I studied my last univeristy course in 1992. I picked up Ocaml in 2004
> >>> and Haskell in 2008. Before Ocaml, the only functional language I had
> >>> used was scheme in the late 1980s.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Scheme is terribly functional, so to say, and is absolutely immerged in
> the Lispy
> >> slang.
> >> All your knowlegde in C, Java, PHP, Assembler, Tcl/Tk, Pascal ... will
> not help you
> >> there.
> >>
> >> I started as an IBM /370 Systems Admin in the late nineties, and it
> took me months of
> >> reading in 2012
> >> to get some understanding about what the heck the scheme people are
> talking about.
> >>
> >> Scheme is even a better example for the problems non university
> learners encounter,
> >> than Ocaml, IMO.
> >
> > A very good book on scheme (which is also quite a deep introduction to
> computer
> > science if you read the whole thing in fact):
> >
> > "structure and interpretation of computer programs"
> >
> > http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
> >
>
> Yes, a good book. The author takes care to only use terms and features he
> explained
> before. I started working through it, then I thought there must be an
> easier way to
> write some system admin scripts like checking if IPv6 is functional,
> ssh-agent has
> identities, ... I will come back to the book.
>
> I find for myself Ocaml is indeed easier to start with than Scheme for a
> FP beginner.
>
> But this is the point: do we need computer science to start with
> functional programming?
>
> Before someone answers "computer science will be good for you" - other
> programming
> languages do not have this requirement.
>
> /Str.
>
>
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