Crafting antiOOP: A 13-Step Journey into Functional Language (Part 1)
Hi guys! We'll go step by step, covering the basics to advanced concepts of functional programming. This will serve as both a guide to build a programming language and a functional one!
Introduction to Functional Programming
Functional programming is a style of coding that focuses on using functions to solve problems. It’s like building with LEGO blocks - each function is a block that does one specific job and you combine them to create bigger structures.
So, welcome to our exciting journey of building a functional programming language from scratch! Yes from zero to hero in the functional programming language (shoutout to Karpathy sensei). So we will be creating a language called antiOOP using Python. As the name suggests, our language will embrace functional programming paradigms while deliberately avoiding object-oriented concepts.
What is Functional Programming?
Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids changing state and mutable data. Some key concepts include:
Immutability: Notice the meme above, yes that’s correct. Data cannot be changed once created here.
Pure Functions: Functions always produce the same output for the same input and have no side effects.
First-Class and Higher-Order Functions: Functions can be assigned to variables, passed as arguments and returned from other functions.
Recursion: If you ever attended any algorithm class you would have heard of this. This will be used for iteration instead of loops.
Lazy Evaluation: Expressions are only evaluated when their results are needed.
Introducing antiOOP
antiOOP will be simple yet powerful functional language (everyone says this it sounds cool) that demonstrates these concepts. Some features we’ll implement include:
Lambda expressions
Closures
Pattern matching
Lazy evaluation
Type inference
Tail call optimization
By the end of this series, you’ll have a working antiOOP interpreter, yes we’ll also build an interpreter (wow 2 in 1 blog) and a deep understanding of functional programming concepts.
But why build a language?
Creating a programming language from scratch offers several benefits:
Deep understanding of language design and implementation
Insight into compiler/interpreter construction
Appreciation for the tradeoffs in language design
And the most important. It’s FUN!!!! Have fun with programming guys. Don’t get stressed
So this was a little intro to how the tone and pace of the series will be. In the next post, we’ll set up our development environment and start designing the core features of antiOOP. Stay tuned and peace!
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Check out Part 2: