Lecturer: Robin Cockett

• It promotes the view of programming as a mathematical activity. 
  
• It promotes programming abstractions (generic code).
• It is typed .... the Hindley-Milner polymorphic type checker.
  
• It allows fast accurate prototyping for complex programs.
• It has datatypes, classes, monads, and many other goodies.
• It helps you, the programmer, develop a clear view of programming!
  

COURSE OUTLINE:

There will be a midterm exam and a final exam.  The course will cover the following topics in roughly this order:

• Introduction to data, maps, and folds in Haskell (3 lectures +  assignment)
  
• Monads, classes, and other topics (3 lectures + assignment)
• Introduction to the lambda calculus (5 lectures)
• Introduction to rewriting theory (4 lectures + assignment)
• Types and programming (5 lectures + assignment)

READING (recommended):

• Benjamin Pierce "Types and Programming Languages" MIT Press.
• Graham Hutton "Programming in Haskell" Cambridge University Press.
  

LECTURE NOTES (as they become available):

• Introduction: functional programming, Haskell, and HUGS (includes the use of the state monad  for substitution).
• Introduction to proofs in general.
• On the history of computability here.
  
• A programming approach to the lambda calculus:
• Paulson's notes, and some notes of mine - still in development - here
• A lambda calculus reducer by Sean Nichols here
  
• Notes on rewriting.
• The typed lambda calculus with fixed points.
• Course handout (fall 2011).
  

1. [Due September 23] Getting going with Haskell (8%)   assignment 1.
2. [Due October 28] Searching (see some notes on Sudoku here, some search programs here)- sudoku (14%)
   
3. [Due November 18] A lambda calculus reducer here (8%).
4. [Due December]  Type inference for the lambda calculus here (15%).

1. Midterm exam (20%) (previous exams -- please note a different order of topics may have been covered -- 2010, 2009,  2007, 2006 and exercise sheet, 2005 and answers, 2002) .
   
2. Final exam (35%), (previous finals 2002, 2006, 2007, and 2008 oral).

Please find the lab. notes for 2009 Jonathan here, 2008 by Ryan here, for 2007 Sean here.
 

HASKELL  LINKS:

• The Haskell home page has many useful subsidiary links (in particular to the various HUGS systems which you can download) .... well worth a visit.
• The definitive text on the lambda calculus (the theory underlying functional programming) is written by Henk Barendregt: there is now a revised edition of the book.
• Here is the main Journal on Functional programming.
• Here is a guide to functional programming on the Web compiled by Philip Wadler who is a cool guy and has many interesting links on his home page.  Check out functional programming in the real world. An example of an expository paper is "History of logic and programming languages", this is of special interest (to me!) as it points to the close link between proof theory and programming languages.
• The main conference in the area is "The International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP)" .   Of particular interest is the functional programming contest (here for example is the 2001 contest ) which is held each year.
• Paul Hudak's homepage.

• John Harrison's notes on functional programming.
• Larry Paulson's notes on a programming approach to the lambda calculus.
  
• A basic introduction to the untyped Lambda Calculus by Ken Slonneger.
• Here is are of Barendregt's notes on functional programming and the lambda calculus.
• Claus Reinke's page on functional programming.
• Here is a lambda calculus reduction workbench written by Peter Sestoft. The reducer is written in Moscow ML and allows one to explore different reduction strategies.

• Stefan Klinger's "Don't Panic" guide to IO Monads
  
• On the monad laws.
  
• Dr. Seuss on Parser Monads: well some good fun for those who have kids (who are still kids)!
• Monadic parsing: Graham Hutton and Erik Meijer