Beautiful imperative code a functional ace in the hole for imperative programmers

Abstract

The beauty of functional programs stems from clear semantics, referential transparency, and the high-level of abstraction that permits programmers to focus on problem solving. In contrast, this beauty is rarely seen or appreciated in imperative code. In addition to solving a problem, imperative programmers focus on the bug-prone sequencing of assignment statements to obtain efficient code. Imperative programmers that learn functional programming, however, can derive an efficient imperative program from a functional program. This is achieved through a small series of meaning-preserving transformations. This article illustrates the transformations using a small example that yields code that is beautiful and efficient. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.