http://www.meetup.com/Lambda-Lounge-Utah/events/222644546/

Programming and Math by Harold Carr

Design patterns are a useful way to organize software. Unfortunately, "gang-of-four"-like patterns are not composable, due to side-effects. In a pure (i.e., no side-effects) language, functions can be composed. That makes it possible to leverage patterns from mathematics. This talk shows an algebra of function composition, identity functions, isomorphisms, (co)products (gluing functions that do not compose) and functors. It shows how this algebra relates to real-world programming. The goal of this talk is to provide an initial intuition of how to apply patterns from math to programming and to motivate you to continue studying on your own (perhaps by looking at the "uber" patterns of Category Theory). Note: knowing these patterns is NOT necessary for getting work done in a functional language, but this talk should give a glimpse of why they may be useful. The talk illustrates ideas using Haskell. It is aimed at FP beginners.