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?

Facebook has recently released a collection of C++ software modules that it uses to run the popular website.  With Facebook releasing Folly (the name it designated for the collection), more of the internal programs could become open source since they need different parts of the collection.

Jordan DeLong, a Facebook software engineer, said one concerning holdup to releasing additional work is that any open source project had to cut away from the dependencies on non-released internal collection code.

One of the biggest challenges in pursuing a career in software development is to figure out which language you want to work. In addition to commonly used software programming languages like C, C++, C# and Java a lot of new programming languages such as Python, Ruby on Rails have surfaced especially because they are used by a lot of consumer based start-ups these days.

It could then be a daunting task to figure out the technical language you should learn which helps you prosper in a software engineering career no matter the technology advancements that happen in the marketplace. Learning a fundamental and universal language like C# could be a great start to your career as the language is very mature and extensively used by companies large and small

What is C#

Similar to Java, C# is a multi-paradigm, object oriented language developed by Microsoft. C# is intended for use in developing software components meant to be deployed in distributed environments. So in essence, learning C# can enable you to write applications for large and complex server side systems that use sophisticated operating systems as well as compact mobile operating systems such as Android

The short answer is, yes and no. It depends upon who you are. The purpose of this entry is to help you determine, yes or no.

Full disclosure. This entry is created on a Mac mini. And doing so on Windows 8 (Release Preview). If you are a developer, in my humble opinion you need to test on all platforms you expect your app to run or you are not much of a developer.

To be successful you need to leave politics in geographical territory known as Washington DC. My definition of that is: 14 mi.² of real estate surrounded by reality.

Only in politics can we afford to take sides. Those of us in IT, especially developers need to do our best to be all things to all people. Certainly this is a technical impossibility. However in our game we can get some points for at least being serviceable if not outstanding.