Lambda Lessons – Motivation: Why Teach FP? – Areas to Consider

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Lambda Lessons – Motivation: Why Teach FP? – Areas to Consider

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lambda-lessons

Lambda Lessons presentation

On Github codemiller / lambda-lessons

Lambda Lessons

Katie Miller (@codemiller)

Background: Who Am I?

Motivation: Why Teach FP?

  • FP is awesome
  • It may not look that way to outsiders
  • Sharing the awesomeness is to the community's benefit

FP Is Awesome

"[W]e're going to be living in a multicore, distributed, concurrent – all the buzz words – world. The conventional models we've been doing, the OO stuff...is not going to survive in that kind of environment. We're already seeing it beginning to fall apart." – Pragmatic Programmer Dave Thomas

There Are FP Learning Barriers

Sharing FP Has Benefits

  • More programmers writing more functional code: software, libraries, languages
  • Larger community helping FP to become more mainstream, leading to more FP jobs
  • More diversity of ideas, driving innovation

Areas to Consider

Curricula and Pedagogy

  • Set clear learning goals
  • Choose primary emphasis: problem solving, language learning, project
  • Consider target audience; build on what they already know
  • Plan a series of small, achievable tasks leading to the end goals
  • Use a variety of teaching mediums, including visual stimuli

Language Choice

Teaching Tools

  • Professional tools aren't designed for beginners; keep it simple, and explain it
  • Obscure error messages are frustrating; choose tools that help students recognise/overcome them
  • Environment set-up can be a major pain point; consider using the cloud

Experience Report 1: NICTA Lambda Ladies Workshop

Overview

  • Free, three-day event at Red Hat Brisbane in March
  • Content based on the NICTA Haskell course
  • First NICTA event to include the Lambda Ladies branding and explicitly invite women
  • Instructors: Tony Morris, Mark Hibberd, and myself, with help from Dave Laing
  • Women given preference, but men also able to apply/attend; 16 women and 11 men accepted

What Went Well

  • On day one, 12 women out of 23 students (52%); over the next two days, numbers dropped but the percentage still 53-55% women
  • Good ratio of instructors to students
  • Content paradigm-focused, consisting of a series of short exercises
  • Expectation set it was OK not to follow every detail
  • Feedback indicated material kick-started further learning

Issues Encountered

  • Value/goals of course not clearly defined
  • Levels of expertise and pace varied greatly
  • Some felt there was too much content
  • Some had difficulty with general tools and GHCI
  • Several students had issues with whitespace in Haskell

Lessons Learnt

  • If you want women to come to your workshop, invite them. Make it clear if workshop will be mixed gender; some prefer woman-only learning environments
  • Make early mention of Haskell/GHCI quirks
  • Include visual representations of key concepts
  • Offer official slides/handouts/answers so no need to copy from projector/whiteboard
  • Have all instructors/helpers deliver content; different perspectives are valuable

Experience Report 2: Haskell in the Cloud Workshop

Overview

  • Four-hour workshop at Codemania Auckland conference in April
  • Taught by myself and Tony Morris
  • 17 registered participants (all men)
  • Brand new course content, focused on Haskell basics and creating a Scotty web app in the cloud with the OpenShift PaaS

Demo

What Went Well

  • Leveraged students' knowledge of web app development
  • Clear goals; expectation set we would omit details
  • Most got Haskell app running locally and in the cloud
  • High level of engagement, during and afterwards

Issues Encountered

  • Lack of time; a lot of FP concept/syntax explanation required before web app work possible
  • Some network issues
  • Some students had issues setting up tools locally, so could only run app in the cloud

Lessons Learnt

  • Cloud can be helpful, but a plan B in case of network issues is a must
  • The context of building something familiar can be a useful way to introduce FP concepts
  • A workshop focused on several things sacrifices depth for breadth, but sharing the big picture of 'the FP way' can be a win

Teaching Opportunities

  • Lunchtime talks at your workplace
  • Presenting at local Meetup groups (FP-focused, and otherwise)
  • Conference presentations
  • Running or helping to coach at workshops
  • Special events (eg: Clojure Bridge)
  • Everyday workplace discussions

Conclusion

References and Credits

References

Image Credits

Lambda Lessons

lessons.codemiller.com

Katie Miller (@codemiller)