The Functional “C” experience

Abstract

A functional programming language can be taught successfully as a first language, but if there is no follow up the students do not appreciate the functional approach. Following discussions concerning this issue at the 1995 FPLE conference (Hartel & Plasmeijer, 1995), we decided to develop such a follow up by writing a book that teaches C to students who can write simple functional programs. This paper summarises the essence of our approach, which is based on program transformation, and presents our experience teaching functional C at the Universities of Southampton and Bristol.