Teaching functional programming to first-year students

Abstract

In the period 1986–1991, experiments have been carried out with an introductory course in computer programming, based on functional programming. Due to thorough educational design and evaluation, a successful course has been developed. This has led to a revision of the computer programming education in the first year of the computer science curriculum at the University of Twente.This article describes the approach, the aim of the computer programming course, the outline and subject matter of the course, and the evaluation. Educational research has been done to assess the quality of the course.

Flipping and Blending—An Action Research Project on Improving a Functional Programming Course

“…From a curricular perspective, students are often required to move from imperative languages to a functional one and difficulties arise when imperative thinking is applied within the functional domain [Joosten et al 1993;Clack and Myers 1995]. Closely related to the research reported in the present article, we have come to know of student challenges with syntax and types when using Haskell functional language .…”

A three paradigm first course for CS majors

“…This claim has been made by most implementors of two paradigm courses and we have found that three paradigm courses can make similar claims. Joosten et al [11] provides some scientific evidence for such claims.…”

Study on difficulties and misconceptions with modern type systems

“…For example, Joosten and Berg [12] report the associativity of the function type seems to be a commonly misunderstood and functions with multiple parameters cause difficulties due the use currying. Similar experiences are reported by Clack and Myers [6] who note that students are prone to confusing the type of a function with the type returned by the function.…”

“…Regardless of their usefulness, type systems have also been reported as significant source of difficulties for beginner programmers [12], while many textbooks on functional programming [1,10,15] largely elide the behaviour of the type system and Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored.…”