Functional Program Design in Scala (Scala 2 version)

Instructor: Martin Odersky

Access provided by Emirates Development Bank

5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

11 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

3 weeks to complete

at 10 hours a week

Flexible schedule

Learn at your own pace

5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

11 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

3 weeks to complete

at 10 hours a week

Flexible schedule

Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

Recognize and apply design principles of functional programs
Design functional libraries and their APIs
Write simple functional reactive applications
Understand reasoning techniques for programs that combine functions and state

Skills you'll gain

Tools you'll learn

Scala Programming

Details to know

Shareable certificate

Add to your LinkedIn profile

Assessments

3 assignments

Taught in English

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There are 5 modules in this course

In this course you will learn how to apply the functional programming style in the design of larger Scala applications. You'll get to know important new functional programming concepts, from lazy evaluation to structuring your libraries using monads. We'll work on larger and more involved examples, from state space exploration to random testing to discrete circuit simulators. You’ll also learn some best practices on how to write good Scala code in the real world. Finally, you will learn how to leverage the ability of the compiler to infer values from types.

Several parts of this course deal with the question how functional programming interacts with mutable state. We will explore the consequences of combining functions and state. We will also look at purely functional alternatives to mutable state, using infinite data structures or functional reactive programming. Recommended background: You should have at least one year programming experience. Proficiency with Java or C# is ideal, but experience with other languages such as C/C++, Python, Javascript or Ruby is also sufficient. You should have some familiarity with using the command line. This course is intended to be taken after Functional Programming Principles in Scala: https://www.coursera.org/learn/scala2-functional-programming.

We'll start by revisiting some concepts that we have learned from Principles of Functional Programming in Scala; collections, pattern matching, and functions. We'll then touch on for-comprehensions, a powerful way in Scala to traverse a list, process it, and return a new list. We'll see how to do queries with for-comprehensions as well as how the for-comprehension is "desugared" into calls to higher-order functions by the Scala compiler. Finally, we'll discuss what monads are, and how to verify that the monad laws are satisfied for a number of examples.

What's included

10 videos10 readings3 programming assignments

10 videos Total 164 minutes

Tools Setup for Linux 23 minutes
Tools Setup for Mac OS X 21 minutes
Tools for Setup for Windows 19 minutes
Tutorial: Working on the Programming Assignments 9 minutes
Recap: Functions and Pattern Matching 20 minutes
Recap: Collections 13 minutes
Lecture 1.1 - Queries with For 8 minutes
Lecture 1.2 - Translation of For 11 minutes
Lecture 1.3 - Functional Random Generators 20 minutes
Lecture 1.4 - Monads 20 minutes

10 readings Total 100 minutes

Tools Setup (Please read) 10 minutes
Troubleshooting 10 minutes
Grading Policy 10 minutes
Sbt Tutorial 10 minutes
IntelliJ IDEA Tutorial 10 minutes
Scala Tutorial 10 minutes
Cheat Sheet 10 minutes
Reactive Cheat Sheet 10 minutes
Scala Style Guide 10 minutes
Learning Resources 10 minutes

3 programming assignments Total 390 minutes

Quickcheck 180 minutes
Example Assignment 30 minutes
Quickcheck 180 minutes

This week we'll revisit performance issues caused by combinatorial search, and we'll discover an important concept in functional programming that can address these issues: laziness. We'll also learn a little bit about proofs on trees; in particular, we'll see how to extend structural induction to trees.

What's included

5 videos2 programming assignments

This week, we’ll learn how to make the compiler write programs for us! We’ll see how the compiler can summon program fragments based on their type and how this mechanism can be used to implement a new form of polymorphism (type classes).

What's included

5 readings3 assignments2 programming assignments

5 readings Total 50 minutes

Motivating Example 10 minutes
Type-Directed Programming 10 minutes
Type Classes 10 minutes
Conditional Implicit Definitions 10 minutes
Implicit Conversions 10 minutes

3 assignments Total 30 minutes

Type-Directed Programming 0 minutes
Conditional Implicit Definitions 30 minutes
Implicit Conversions 0 minutes

2 programming assignments Total 360 minutes

JSON Codecs 180 minutes
JSON Codecs 180 minutes

This week, we'll learn about state and side-effects. Through a rich example, we'll learn programming patterns for managing state in larger programs. We'll also learn about for-loops and while-loops in Scala.

What's included

6 videos

This week we'll learn a number of important programming patterns via examples, starting with the observer pattern, and then going on to functional reactive programming.