Re:Ask HN: How to be fluent in functional language speak?
by WorldMaker on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @11:24AM
(#23080992)
As with so many things in life, a lot of it boils down to practice.
Are you just trying to read academic articles and blog posts? Have you tried working in one or more of the languages? Beyond "toy problems" to trying to solve larger problems?
The more you work in a language, the more you might start to understand the needs that underlie things like category theory (the mathematics of monoids, semigroups, monads, etc) and where other higher level abstractions start to play in how you want/need to write software.
There's also places to practice even in C++, Java, etc. A lot of functional programming is making its way "stealth" into even the most imperative OO languages. Are you handy with your languages map/filter/reduce libraries around iterables? Have you tried pushing that deeper towards other monads such as query transformation (Linq) or time (async/await, ReactiveX)? Have you thought about how those work under the hood? (Explored what a iterable generator or an async/await decompile to?) Have you started yet to think in terms of high level "lambdas", places where functions themselves can be reused by other objects/functions? (Beyond "callbacks" towards thinking of functions themselves as lego bricks to build with.)
There's also middle ground languages such as F# or Clojure that you can use side-by-side (in some circumstances) C# or Java (respectively) code where maybe you can't work 100% in a functional language on a project, but you can get a compromise mix.
So much of understanding the "lingo" is recognizing the patterns and/or problems to which they refer, and a lot of the easiest way you will pick up patterns and see recurring patterns is practice.
Are you just trying to read academic articles and blog posts? Have you tried working in one or more of the languages? Beyond "toy problems" to trying to solve larger problems?
The more you work in a language, the more you might start to understand the needs that underlie things like category theory (the mathematics of monoids, semigroups, monads, etc) and where other higher level abstractions start to play in how you want/need to write software.
There's also places to practice even in C++, Java, etc. A lot of functional programming is making its way "stealth" into even the most imperative OO languages. Are you handy with your languages map/filter/reduce libraries around iterables? Have you tried pushing that deeper towards other monads such as query transformation (Linq) or time (async/await, ReactiveX)? Have you thought about how those work under the hood? (Explored what a iterable generator or an async/await decompile to?) Have you started yet to think in terms of high level "lambdas", places where functions themselves can be reused by other objects/functions? (Beyond "callbacks" towards thinking of functions themselves as lego bricks to build with.)
There's also middle ground languages such as F# or Clojure that you can use side-by-side (in some circumstances) C# or Java (respectively) code where maybe you can't work 100% in a functional language on a project, but you can get a compromise mix.
So much of understanding the "lingo" is recognizing the patterns and/or problems to which they refer, and a lot of the easiest way you will pick up patterns and see recurring patterns is practice.