Studying a functional programming language is a good way to discover new approaches to problems and different ways of thinking. Although functional programming has much in common with logic and imperative programming, it uses unique abstractions and a different toolset for solving problems. Likewise, many current mainstream languages are beginning to pick up and integrate various techniques and features from functional programming.

Many authorities feel that Haskell is a great introductory language for learning functional programming. However, there are various other possibilities, including Scheme, F#, Scala, Clojure, Erlang and others.

Haskell is widely recognized as a beautiful, concise and high-performing programming language. It is statically typed and supports various cool features that augment language expressivity, including currying and pattern matching. In addition to monads, the language support a type-class system based on methods; this enables higher encapsulation and abstraction. Advanced Haskell will require learning about combinators, lambda calculus and category theory. Haskell allows programmers to create extremely elegant solutions.

Scheme is another good learning language -- it has an extensive history in academia and a vast body of instructional documents. Based on the oldest functional language -- Lisp -- Scheme is actually very small and elegant. Studying Scheme will allow the programmer to master iteration and recursion, lambda functions and first-class functions, closures, and bottom-up design.

Supported by Microsoft and growing in popularity, F# is a multi-paradigm, functional-first programming language that derives from ML and incorporates features from numerous languages, including OCaml, Scala, Haskell and Erlang. F# is described as a functional language that also supports object-oriented and imperative techniques. It is a .NET family member. F# allows the programmer to create succinct, type-safe, expressive and efficient solutions. It excels at parallel I/O and parallel CPU programming, data-oriented programming, and algorithmic development.

Scala is a general-purpose programming and scripting language that is both functional and object-oriented. It has strong static types and supports numerous functional language techniques such as pattern matching, lazy evaluation, currying, algebraic types, immutability and tail recursion. Scala -- from "scalable language" -- enables coders to write extremely concise source code. The code is compiled into Java bytecode and executes on the ubiquitous JVM (Java virtual machine).

Like Scala, Clojure also runs on the Java virtual machine. Because it is based on Lisp, it treats code like data and supports macros. Clojure's immutability features and time-progression constructs enable the creation of robust multithreaded programs.

Erlang is a highly concurrent language and runtime. Initially created by Ericsson to enable real-time, fault-tolerant, distributed applications, Erlang code can be altered without halting the system. The language has a functional subset with single assignment, dynamic typing, and eager evaluation. Erlang has powerful explicit support for concurrent processes.

Computer Programming as a Career?

What little habits make you a better software engineer?

It’s the eternal conundrum of a hiring manager – you have to hire for every single position in the company without any first-hand experience. How to do it? If you can have a trusted programmer sit in on the interview, that’s ideal, of course. But what if you’re hiring your first programmer? Or what if you’re hiring a freelancer? Or what if company policy dictates that you’re the only person allowed to do the interviewing? Well, in that case, you need some helpful advice and your innate bullshit detector. We questioned programmers and hiring managers and compiled a list of dos and don’ts. Here are some things to ask when interviewing programmers:

Past Experience

Ask the programmer about the biggest disaster of his career so far, and how he handled it. Did he come in at midnight to fix the code? Was he unaware of the problem until someone brought it up? Did someone else handle it?  According to our programmer sources, “Anyone worth their salt has caused a major meltdown. If they say they haven’t, they’re lying. Or very, very green.” Pushing a code with bugs in it isn’t necessarily bad. Not handling it well is bad.

As usual, your biggest asset is not knowing the field, it is knowing people. Asking about career disasters can be uncomfortable, but if the interviewee is experienced and honest then she won’t have a problem telling you about it, and you will get an idea of how she handles mishaps. Even if you don’t understand what the disaster was or how it was fixed, you should be able to tell how honest she’s being and how she handles being put on the spot.

The field of information technology is in many ways perfectly suited for entrepreneurship. Many highly successful enterprises started with a lone IT professional venturing out on their own and starting up their own company. If you have computer science skills and want to explore alternative options outside the corporate arena you should seriously consider going into business for yourself. Businesses may be more willing to hire you as a contractor rather than as a full-time worker. There are certain IT jobs that are perfect for individuals who want to be self-employed, they include:

• Working as a Consultant
Large IT departments are not as necessary for corporations as they were at the start of the internet era; this is partly due to the trend towards cloud computing. Consultants are often brought in to handle the need for tech expertise when companies downsize or eliminate their IT departments. A consultant may work for several different clients at the same time, be on call for various disciplines or be commissioned for specific projects.

• Web Entrepreneurship
The ease of building a website and the fact that web hosting is relatively affordable means that it does not take a lot of know-how to start your own online empire. You can sell products or services, or start your own online community. Another option is to start selling goods via auction sites or on sites that sell advertising space. You will need an understanding of marketing and of search engine optimization so that you can draw visitors to your site.

• Programming Apps for Mobile Devices
The future of the Internet is in mobile devices. Statistics show that much of the world will be using mobile devices and smart phones to handle their surfing needs in the near future. If you have the skills to program the apps used on these devices, you could be among those riding the wave of this trend.

It is not impossible to start an Information Technology company with very little startup capital. Getting it off the ground in terms of online visibility will require focus to detail, knowing your target market, a consistent campaign to build a client list and a solid reputation.

F# is excellent for specialties such as scientific computing and data analysis. It is an excellent choice for enterprise development as well. There are a few great reasons why you should consider using F# for your next project.

Concise

F# is not cluttered up with coding noise;  no pesky semicolons, curly brackets, and so on. You almost never have to specify the kind of object you're referencing because of its powerful type inference system. It usually takes fewer lines of code to solve the same issue.

Convenient

Common programming tasks are much easier in F#. These include generating and using state machines, comparison and equality, list processing, as well as complex type definitions. It is very easy to generate powerful and reusable code because functions are first class objects. This is done by creating functions that have other functions as parameters or that combine existing functions to generate a new functionality.

Correctness

F# has a strong type system, and, therefore, prevents many common errors such as null reference exceptions. Valuables are immutable by default which, too, prevents a huge class of errors. You can also encode business logic by utilizing the type system. When done correctly, it is impossible to mix up units of measure or to write incorrect code thereby decresing the need of unit tests.

Concurrency

F# has number of built-in libraries. These libraries help when more than one thing at a time is occurring. Parallelism and asynchronous programming are very simple. There is also a built-in actor model as well as excellent support for event handling and functional reactive programming. Sharing state and avoiding locks are much easier because data structures are immutable by default.

Completeness

F# also supports other styles that are not 100 percent pure. This makes it easier to interact with the non-pure world of databases, websites, other applications, and so on. It is actually designed as a hybrid functional/OO language. F# is also part of the .NET ecosystem. This gives you seamless access to all the third party .NET tools and libraries. It operates on most platforms. These platforms include Linux and smartphones via mono. Visual Studio is integrates with F# as well. This means you get many plug-ins for unit tests, a debugger, a IDE with IntelliSense support, other development tasks. You can use MonoDevelop IDE on Linux.

Related:

F# - Marching Towards Top 10 Programming Languages

What Are the Advantages of Python Over Ruby?

Top 10 Programming Languages Expected To Be In Demand in 2014