Functional Smalltalk

2. Value I’m going to start with a quote from Kent Beck

3. Value Software creates value 2 ways: What it does today What new things we can make it do tomorrow

6. Value Smalltalk creates value 2 ways: What it does today What new things we can make it do tomorrow

7. Functional Smalltalk Smalltalk already has many functional features extensions by syntax extensions by class

8. Functional Smalltalk Smalltalk already has many functional features extensions by syntax extensions by class

9. Syntax: Functional Programming Smalltalk has always had blocks - needed full closures CompileWithCompose in Pharo-Functional repo leverages class-bounded alternative compiler just syntactic sugar - more succinct all are upward compatible as they are currently syntax errors

14. Compose/pipe/parrot operator very convenient to pass result of one expression to another without parentheses particularly convenient in PharoJS for e.g. D3

15. Compose/pipe/parrot operator very convenient to pass result of one expression to another without parentheses particularly convenient in PharoJS for e.g. D3 1 foo 2 " s e l f new foo >>> 42 " 3 ↑ 17 negated 4 :> min: -53 5 :> abs 6 :> < 100 7 :> and: [ 4 > 2 ] 8 :> and: [ 5 < 10 ] 9 :> ifTrue: [ 42 ] ifFalse: [ 99 ]

16. Compose/pipe/parrot operator very convenient to pass result of one expression to another without parentheses particularly convenient in PharoJS for e.g. D3 1 foo 2 " s e l f new foo >>> 42 " 3 ↑ 17 negated 4 :> min: -53 5 :> abs 6 :> < 100 7 :> and: [ 4 > 2 ] 8 :> and: [ 5 < 10 ] 9 :> ifTrue: [ 42 ] ifFalse: [ 99 ]

17. ... Compose/pipe/parrot operator The precedence is the same as cascade, so you can intermix them and could say something like: 1 x := OrderedCollection new 2 add: 42; 3 add: 17; 4 yourself 5 :> collect: #negated 6 :> add: 35; 7 add: 99; 8 yourself 9 :> with: #(1 2 3 4) collect: [:l :r| l+r ] 10 :> max

18. ... Compose/pipe/parrot operator If you don’t want to use the alternate compiler (and get the :> syntax) PharoFunctional also provides a chain method on Object that supports chaining using cascades (unfortunately quite a bit slower because it requires a DNU and perform for each chained message): 1 foo 2 " s e l f new foo >>> 42 " 3 ↑ 17 chain 4 negated 5 ; min: -53 6 ; abs 7 ; < 100 8 ; and: [ 4 > 2 ] 9 ; and: [ 5 < 10 ] 10 ; ifTrue: [ 42 ] ifFalse: [ 99 ]

19. Point-free programming style popular style of functional programming composing functions to build up operations with implicit parameters various “combinators” that recognize patterns in these compositions in Smalltalk this is composing symbols and blocks e.g. 1 isPalindrome := #reverse <| > #= . 2 isPalindrome value: ’madam’

24. Expressions as unary or binary messages To use point-free style, it is very convenient to have a more succinct syntax for applying them 1 x (...) 2 x (...) + y 3 x (...): y 4 x (#sort <| > #=) Converts to. 1 ([...] value: x) 2 ([...] value: x) + y 3 ([...] value: x value: y) 4 ((#sort <| > #=) value: x)

25. Blocks as unary or binary messages You can do the same with unary or binary blocks. Because we know the arity of blocks the trailing : isn’t used for block operators 1 x [:w| ...] 2 x [:w:z| ...] y becomes 1 ([:w| ...] value: x) 2 ([:w:z| ...] value: x value: y)

26. Initializing local variables at point of declaration Even in functional languages where mutation is possible, it is rarely used. Instead programming is by a sequence of definitions, which always have a value. I personally very much miss this in Smalltalk. 1 | w x := 42. y = x+5. z a | is legal, but 1 | x := 42. y = x+5. z = 17 | isn’t.

27. Collection literals Arrays have a literal syntax {1 . 2 . 3}, but other collections don’t. This extension recognizes :className immediately after the { and translates, e.g. 1 {:Set 3 . 4 . 5 . 3} 2 {:Dictionary #a->1 . #b->2} 3 {:Set 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7} to 1 Set with: 3 with: 4 with: 5 with: 3 2 Dictionary with: #a->1 with: #b->2 3 Set withAll: {1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7}

28. Destructuring collections There isn’t a convenient way to return multiple values from a method, or even to extract multiple values from a collection. For example: 1 :| a b c | := some-collection destructures the 3 elements of a SequenceableCollection or would extract the value of keys #a #b etc. if it was a Dictionary, with anything else being a runtime error. This is conveniently done by converting that to: 1 ([:temp| 2 a := temp firstNamed: #a. 3 b := temp secondNamed: #b. 4 c := temp thirdNamed: #c. 5 temp] value: some-collection)

29. Classes: Functional Programming PharoFunctional adds several new classes and a variety of extension methods to facilitate functional programming. curry: and @@ value:, value:value: and cull, etc. for Symbol map:, map:map: for BlockClosure and Symbol <*> and other combinators for BlockClosure and Symbol nilOr:, emptyOrNilOr: Slice, Pair and Tuple, ZippedCollection zip:, >===< iota many algorithms on collections: rotate:, slide:, product, allEqual, unique, isUnique, groupByRunsEqual:, groupByRunsTrue:

38. Demo

39. Using CompileWithCompose 1 Metacello new 2 baseline: ’PharoFunctional’; 3 repository: ’github://dvmason/Pharo-Functional:ma 4 load: #compiler Then for any class heirarchy, add a trait: 1 RBScannerTest subclass: #ComposeExampleTest 2 uses: ComposeSyntax 3 instanceVariableNames: ’’ 4 classVariableNames: ’’ 5 package: ’CompileWithCompose-Tests’ Or, on the class-side define the following method: 1 compilerClass 2 " Answer a compiler c l a s s a p p r o p r i a t e f o r source 3 ↑ ComposeCompiler You can use this second approach if you want to add it to the entire image (including in playgrounds), by defining this in Object class.

40. Conclusions Smalltalk already has the fundamentals for functional programming some simple syntactic suger can make it a lot more pleasant I would love it if some of these became mainstream (with no backward compatibility issues) in the meantime, anyone can add this to their Pharo the compiler tweaks are not hard for other Smalltalks to implement

45. Questions? @DrDaveMason [email protected] https://github.com/dvmason/Pharo-Functional

Functional Smalltalk

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Functional Smalltalk