Why Functional Programming Matters by John Hughes, The Computer Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1989, pp. 98 - 107. Also in: David A. Turner (ed.): Research Topics in Functional Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1990, pp. 17 - 42.
As software becomes more and more complex, it is more and more important to structure it well. Well-structured software is easy to write, easy to debug, and provides a collection of modules that can be re-used to reduce future programming costs. Conventional languages place conceptual limits on the way problems can be modularised. Functional languages push those limits back. In this paper we show that two features of functional languages in particular, higher-order functions and lazy evaluation, can contribute greatly to modularity. As examples, we manipulate lists and trees, program several numerical algorithms, and implement the alpha-beta heuristic (an algorithm from Artificial Intelligence used in game-playing programs). Since modularity is the key to successful programming, functional languages are vitally important to the real world. The paper is available as postscript and pdf, and here is a bibtex entry.
A slightly less formal essay inspired by the paper above can be found in
Why Haskell Matters originally by Sebastian Sylvan
Taken from haskell.org.
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