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A Day in the life of a Functional Programmer

I sometimes think I should have used a different name to Brighton Java. Maybe Brighton JVM would have been more appropriate. We’ve certainly had a wider range of talks than the name implies. But the name Brighton Java does seem to draw people in, and nobody complains about the eclectic selection of talks.

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Last Wednesday we welcomed back Richard Dallaway of Underscore Consulting, who spoke about a day in the life of a functional programmer (slides here, with notes here) The talk was intended to communicate some of the exciting concepts available in Scala

You don’t come away from a talk like this knowing how to work with Scala – but it gives a clear demonstration that there are other ways in which code can work. While Java has certainly added many features in recent years, the language is a far less interesting and expressive one than Scala. It’s also interesting to see the way Scala supports different approaches to a same problem – Java, by comparison, tends to be more prescriptive about how to write code.

For Richard, Scala works better for modelling some things better than Java’s class hierarchies – the talk worked as a good companion to Danielle’s talk the month before.

We’re hoping to start a Scala workshop as part of Brighton Java, based on Functional Brighton‘s Learn You a Haskell group. It looks like we will base the first sessions on Underscores Essential Scala book. More news on that soon.

It was a good meeting, sponsored by Brandwatch. As well as providing the venue and AV equipment, they supported us with a great abundance of pizza. Thank you!

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