Talk Description: Functional Programming (FP), a paradigm in which programs are made up of pure, stateless functions, is adored by many programmers for how easy it makes it to predict, test, and debug the behavior of the code we write. Although FP has an unfortunate reputation as an ivory-tower domain full of obscure jargon comprehensible only to those with PhDs in category theory, the core concepts are straightforward ideas all of us can understand, and even have fun learning!In this talk, we’ll create generative SVG art as a way to explore fundamental FP concepts such as recursion and function composition, and tackle the practical challenges of FP in the real world, such as dealing with the tricky parts like side effects and randomness which don’t fit into the safe, sterile world of pure functions. By the end of the talk we’ll not only have the key concepts & techniques we need to start writing our own functional programs, we’ll have some pretty functional art to look at too!

Speaker Bio: Anjana suffers from a chronic case of curiosity, which led her from philosophy to English teaching to computational linguistics to software development. As an engineer & educator, these days she mostly codes & teaches from her home base in San Francisco, when not traveling (in a mask) to events around the world to speak about the joy of programming and advocate for a more equitable & ethical tech industry. Nerd out with her about functional programming & JavaScript, ask her about the Recurse Center & Outreachy, and definitely invite her to your karaoke party!