Functional Programming

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cercerilla

Excel as an intro to functional programming concepts? (self.functional_programming)

submitted 2 years ago by JackbyDev to c/functional_programming

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Howdy, I remember a podcast where they have the example of Microsoft Excel as an example for an introduction to functional programming. I believe it was an SE Radio podcast on Clojure or that build tool it uses. It doesn't really matter.

I already understood functional concepts and try to use them where I can in Java and other languages. (It is easier to reason about immutable data and pure methods.) I found the metaphor of Excel very interesting though. Because that's basically what it is. I'm sure there are ways to have it not act functionally but the vast majority of the time it is, and I think more people have the basic vocabulary of Excel than functional programming.

Has anyone ever used this or heard of it being used as an example while teaching fp?

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[–] cercerilla 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’ve heard it come up in talks as a curiosity but I’m not familiar with any concrete attempts to use it as a part of a course. I expect that most while on the whole excel might be the worlds most popular programming language, the overlap between people who are good enough at excel for it to benefit their learning, and the people who want to learn FP, is small enough that it would hinder more than help.

That said, my intuition could be totally wrong here and if someone does put something like that together I’d love to see if.

[–] JackbyDev 1 points 2 years ago

There are a lot of shitty "programming lite" tools for business folks, essentially "Scratch Enterprise" lol, but many many people know how to use Excel. I think there might be a little more market than you think for helping business folks learn some programming. But still, "real" functional languages are not a great first step necessarily.