Foundations of Functional Programming

This unit introduces core functional programming concepts and contrasts them with procedural paradigms while grounding students in practical tools (Python and Haskell) and development environments. Learners will explore data representation, list manipulation, recursion, I/O, debugging, and basic text/binary processing to prepare for advanced functional design and data-processing units that follow.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze core functional programming principles (including lambda calculus origins) and compare declarations and procedures across functional and procedural paradigms
• Apply Python and Haskell development environments and toolchains (e.g., Anaconda, Haskell installations) to create, run, and debug simple programs that accept command-line input and read/write local files
• Demonstrate creation and manipulation of common data structures and operations—lists, slicing, recursion, regular expressions, and binary vs. textual data handling—in both Python and Haskell
• Evaluate program behavior to identify and fix bugs, select appropriate standard datasets and libraries (such as Gensim), and choose suitable data representation and I/O strategies for introductory data-processing tasks