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ICFP
2009
ACM

A functional I/O system or, fun for freshman kids

14 years 4 months ago
A functional I/O system or, fun for freshman kids
Functional programming languages ought to play a central role in mathematics education for middle schools (age range: 10?14). After all, functional programming is a form of algebra and programming is a creative activity about problem solving. Introducing it into mathematics courses would make pre-algebra course come alive. If input and output were invisible, students could implement fun simulations, animations, and even interactive and distributed games all while using nothing more than plain mathematics. We have implemented this vision with a simple framework for purely functional I/O. Using this framework, students design, implement, and test plain mathematical functions over numbers, booleans, string, and images. Then the framework wires them up to devices and performs all the translation from external information to internal data (and vice versa)--just like every other operating system. Once middle school students are hooked on this form of programming, our curriculum provides a s...
Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew
Added 22 Nov 2009
Updated 22 Nov 2009
Type Conference
Year 2009
Where ICFP
Authors Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, Shriram Krishnamurthi
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