Programming Language Concepts - Functional Programming

Flashcards covering essential vocabulary and concepts related to programming languages, particularly functional programming.

Functional Programming

A programming paradigm where computation is treated as the evaluation of mathematical functions.

Lisp

The first functional programming language, developed in the late 1950s.

Scheme

A dialect of Lisp designed to teach programming; known for its simple syntax and powerful features.

First-class functions

Functions that can be passed as arguments, returned as values, and assigned to variables.

Lambda notation

A way to express anonymous functions in functional programming.

Recursion

A programming technique where a function calls itself to solve a problem.

Expressiveness

The breadth of concepts that can be expressed in a programming language.

Evaluation semantics

Rules that dictate how and when expressions in a programming language are evaluated.

Tail recursion

A specific kind of recursion where the recursive call is the last operation in the function.

List manipulation

Using functions like 'car', 'cdr', and 'cons' to operate on and modify lists.

Numeric predicates

Functions that perform tests on numerical values and return boolean results.

Higher-order functions

Functions that take other functions as arguments or return them as results.

Map function

A function that applies a given function to each item in a list, producing a new list.

Filter function

A function that processes a list and retains only the elements that satisfy a specified condition.

Quoting in Scheme

Using 'quote' to prevent evaluation of an expression and treat it as data.

Control structures

Constructs that dictate the flow of control in a program, such as 'if' and 'cond'.

Equality functions

Functions used to compare values in Scheme and return true or false.

GCD function

A function that computes the greatest common divisor of two numbers.

Object modeling

Using functions to model the behavior and characteristics of objects in a programming language.

DrScheme

An integrated development environment for the Scheme programming language.

REPL

Read-Eval-Print Loop; an interactive programming environment where expressions are read, evaluated, and printed.