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Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

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Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#21

Post by garyrob »

always_good wrote: post #7
akuji1993 wrote: post #3

Actually the course on Egghead is terrible. The voice that is used to comment on the video is very badly recorded and I have no idea why they chose that voice for a serious video for adults. Edit: Also fine to not have my opinion on this, but a lot of people shared my opinion, check the Egghead comment section. I would've loved to watch that video, with a more professional voice and walkthrough.

What's with this modern internet culture of calling everything "terrible" or "garbage" because it has some defects, even subjective ones? I've watched this gradual change in the users of my own forum I started over 10 years ago. People with no skin in the game think so highly of their opinion that they use it to discredit and dismiss something as terrible garbage. Seems related to the rise of self-entitlement culture…

The problem I have with his comment isn’t directly about the question of whether the video is “good” or “bad”. It’s with the fact that the comment seems partly designed to slap the face of the person he’s responding too, by starting it out with the world “actually”. He instantaneously implies that only his opinion is objectively correct, i.e. the “actual” truth, and that, therefore the poster he’s replying to is some idiot living in a fantasy world who obviously can’t discern actual quality. And all that was done to get that reprimand was express some appreciation for a free video which he learned something from. I must admit that I do wonder whether this kind of behavior, which I feel occurs far too often, is primarily a way a for person of low self-esteem to feel better about himself at someone else’s expense, from the safety of the internet. Or am I being too harsh here?

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#22

Post by ballenf »

akuji1993 wrote: post #8
always_good wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with this modern internet culture of calling everything "terrible" or "garbage" because it has some defects, even subjective ones? I've watched this gradual change in the users of my own forum I started over 10 years ago. People with no skin in the game think so highly of their opinion that they use it to discredit and dismiss something as terrible garbage. Seems related to the rise of self-entitlement culture…

In my opinion it's more related to the fact, that people are actually creating very good content, so if somebody pushes something that is way under that value, you recognize and move away from it. I've watched tutorials on functional programming that took themselves seriously and used a normal, human voice to bring their point across and sorry, I consider those a lot better than this.

The interplay between content and presentation is a symbiotic relationship where either side can drag down the whole. I loved the content of the Frisby egghead course, but have to admit that I had trouble finishing it because the presentation became tiresome for me. I also felt like I couldn't listen to it within earshot (or view) of anyone for fear of looking like a child watching cartoons.

There's no point in attacking the course based on this aspect of its presentation. If it were super polished but made a bunch of mistakes, that's when you need to shout loudly to anyone you care about "don't watch that course! It's full of mistakes!"

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#23

Post by ballenf »

akuji1993 wrote: post #9
jwarren wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely understand that it could be more difficult for non-native speakers to understand. It's been sped up to match the cartoon style characters that he uses, and presumably for information density. I personally really enjoyed it, even if I did have to frequently pause the videos to recap something he had just said.

See, isn't it a negative point for you, that you have to stop and revert the video to an earlier point frequently because of this. As someone who has learned a lot through video guides (which are my favorite medium to learn, other than just reading the docs), I think that talking slowly through complex problems is the better way to go, even if that means, the video will be longer.

I'd much rather pause and rewind than have the opposite problem: bored at slow or repetitive presentation but not knowing if I can skip ahead and miss something new.

Fast paced places the viewer in control. Too slow pace is like keeping them prisoner or feeding them via drip line.

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#24

Post by brianberns »

mkirklions wrote: post #19

I spent about 30 minutes reading, but I didnt understand why this has 140 points and is the top thread. Can anyone explain?

Functional programming (FP) is an important paradigm with many practical benefits, such as preventing bugs, improving parallelization, etc.

JavaScript is a language in which one can apply the FP paradigm, with some (considerable) effort. This book explains both the underlying FP paradigm and how to apply it in JS.

Other languages (e.g. Haskell, Scala, F#) are designed for the FP paradigm and make it much easier to apply. But the paradigm itself is the same for all of them, as it arises from fundamental mathematical laws.

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#25

Post by twostoned »

garyrob wrote: post #21
always_good wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with this modern internet culture of calling everything "terrible" or "garbage" because it has some defects, even subjective ones? I've watched this gradual change in the users of my own forum I started over 10 years ago. People with no skin in the game think so highly of their opinion that they use it to discredit and dismiss something as terrible garbage. Seems related to the rise of self-entitlement culture…

The problem I have with his comment isn’t directly about the question of whether the video is “good” or “bad”. It’s with the fact that the comment seems partly designed to slap the face of the person he’s responding too, by starting it out with the world “actually”. He instantaneously implies that only his opinion is objectively correct, i.e. the “actual” truth, and that, therefore the poster he’s replying to is some…

I don't think you're being too harsh. There's a weird sort of subtle trolling that goes on on online discussions to the point that I don't much engage in online communities. I don't think it's trolling in the sense that people don't consciously do it; they're just negative: "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!!"

Internet discussion has become very toxic (well, perhaps it always has been). The other day I was on IRC and asked a question about Eclipse which was doing some quirky things that I didn't know how to disable and one of the people in the chat (not a huge open freenode chat but the chat of a smaller, private community) responded "Java is horrible" or something along those lines. I hadn't even mentioned that I was writing Java! What's funny is that I can't imagine anyone responding in this way were it an in-person conversation. You get much more "I don't care much for Java" or even "What are you using Eclipse for?"

I guess because if you're a nasty person AFK people will avoid you and you do face the risk of some social ostracization. However, with the internet, it's harder to prune these people from your social circle.

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#27

Post by mkirklions »

brianberns wrote: post #24
mkirklions wrote: post #19

I spent about 30 minutes reading, but I didnt understand why this has 140 points and is the top thread. Can anyone explain?

Functional programming (FP) is an important paradigm with many practical benefits, such as preventing bugs, improving parallelization, etc. JavaScript is a language in which one can apply the FP paradigm, with some (considerable) effort. This book explains both the underlying FP paradigm and how to apply it in JS. Other languages (e.g. Haskell, Scala, F#) are designed for the FP paradigm and make it much easier to ap…

Thank you!

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#28

Post by aarpmcgee »

akuji1993 wrote: post #3

Actually the course on Egghead is terrible. The voice that is used to comment on the video is very badly recorded and I have no idea why they chose that voice for a serious video for adults. Edit: Also fine to not have my opinion on this, but a lot of people shared my opinion, check the Egghead comment section. I would've loved to watch that video, with a more professional voice and walkthrough.

The voice effect wasn’t my cup of tea either. Found it distracting and difficult to understand, so I skipped the series.

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#29

Post by tuukkah »

> We have all the features we need to mimic a language like Scala or Haskell with the help of a tiny library or two.

Seems misleading at best, as you mimic only some parts of functional programming. For example, for-loops are not used but neither are recursion and tail calls mentioned.

> [T]yped functional languages will, without a doubt, be the best place to code in the style presented by this book. JavaScript will be our means of learning a paradigm, where you apply it is up to you.

Surprising how they teach the typed functional programming paradigm in a language which does not support you in it. Going from JavaScript to Haskell, wouldn't PureScript be a better stepping stone than this? Consider tail call elimination or all the support that type checking gives you to get the type nestings right, especially when you are a beginner and may have issues even with String being [Char] (unlike JavaScript) let alone Monads etc.

(EDIT: In case you didn't check the contents of the book: Yes, this is a book that teaches Monads, type classes, pointfree style, Hindley-Milner(!) etc., not a form of FP that would be natural in JS.)

Re: Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (2015)

#30

Post by blindwatchmaker »

Really enjoyed this book. Once you get currying, and using curried functions to pipe/compose, everything clicks into place. I found the examples of using Nothing/Maybe monads for error handling pretty neat as well - is that a common pattern, because I don't remember native support for those types when I briefly dabbled in elixir.

Also is his explanation of monads as 'functors that can flatten' a simplification for the purposes of teaching, or is that more or less what they are?

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