LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Functional Programming: Functional Programming Languages
built 184 days ago
A broader conception of functional programming simply defines a set of common concerns and themes rather than a list of distinctions from other paradigms. Often considered important are higher-order and first-class functions, closures, and recursion. Other common features of functional programming languages are continuations, non-strict evaluation (including, but not limited to, "laziness"), and monads.
Source:
Microsoft has announced that support for the F# functional programming language will be fully integrated into Visual Studio. This marks a bold new commitment to facilitating functional programming on the .NET platform and could potentially help legitimize functional programming in enterprise environments. Microsoft's promotion of F# to a fully-supported language in Visual Studio is ... indicative of the extreme versatility of the .NET platform and Microsoft's Common Language Runtime.
Source:
Many programming languages support programming in both functional and imperative styles... each language has syntax and facilities that are optimised only for one of these styles. Often, code written in one particular style and not the other is executed efficiently by the implementations. In addition to that, coding conventions and libraries often force the programmer to use one of the styles. Therefore, programming languages are categorized into functional and imperative ones.
Source:
![\includegraphics[width=5in]{vocab1.aw.eps}](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/f/u/n/functional-programming/i/001.gif)
Functional languages allow programming without assignments. Structured imperative languages (no goto statements) provide programs which are easier derive, understand, and reason about. Similarly, assignment-free functional languages are easier to derive, understand, and reason about.
Source:
These pages are for people interested in applying the ideas of patterns and pattern languages to the doing, understanding, and teaching of functional programming. This is just the beginning of what some hope will be a productive area of study. The web pages here are in a beta-release state.
Source:
Looping, another imperative programming construct, is accomplished through the more general functional construct of recursion. Recursive functions invoke themselves, allowing an operation to be performed over and over. In fact, it can be proven that looping is equivalent to a special type of recursion called tail recursion. Recursion in functional programming can take many forms and is in general a more powerful technique than looping. For this reason, almost all imperative languages ... support it (with FORTRAN 77 and COBOL as notable exceptions).
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Functional Programming Languages